His Porsche 911 discovered it on a 2,000 kilometer trip and the police also discovered it

In the late 70s and early 80s, Bill Gates was not only known for his talent in programming and for having founded one of the most thriving technology companies, but also for his love for speed and supercars. Especially those of porsche.

The problem with driving a supercar is that it is relatively easy to exceed the speed limits. Thanks to this ease of stepping on the accelerator more than necessary, Gates has a strange record: three speeding tickets in a single trip. According what was published by Luxury Launchestwo of them placed by the same police officer who was following him.

Release stress at full speed. When Microsoft was still in its infancy in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Gates used to drive his Porsche at high speed through the desert after long days of programming. This habit caused him more than one problem with the local police and ended with the now famous photograph of his mugshot in 1977. Although, in his defense, it should be said that this arrest was due to skipping a stop sign and driving without a license to Albuquerque, not for speeding.

That reckless behavior behind the wheel caused him all kinds of problems, and ended the patience of everyone around him. As Walter Isaacson said in an interview for Time, Paul Allen, his founding partner at Microsoft, had to bail him out of jail after one of his midnight escapades to drive at full speed on the roads of the New Mexico desert.

2,000 kilometers go a long way. In 1979, Microsoft made the decision to move from Albuquerque to Seattle to establish its headquarters there, so its founders also packed their bags back north. However, Gates decided that, instead of sending his Porsche 911 in a truckit would be a good idea to drive it to Seattle himself.

As the millionaire has acknowledged in several interviews, on that trip to Seattle he accumulated up to three “very serious fines for speeding”, two of them from the same agent who, after detecting Gates’ speeding, began to follow him. In this section, the millionaire committed another reckless act, which led to a double fine. “It was a very long trip,” said the millionaire.

Gates and his obsession with Porsches. Since started driving – and he could afford it – Gates has been especially attracted to supercars made by Porsche. In 1987, Gates ordered a Porsche 959then considered one of the most advanced supercars in the world, thanks to its biturbo engine, all-wheel drive and pioneering electronics. The car was capable of reaching 317 km/h and only 337 units were manufactured, something that made it a true collector’s item.

However, when the car arrived in the United States, it was detained at customs in Seattle because the brand had not passed the safety tests for the US for that imported model. For 13 years, Gates paid a fee of $28 a day to keep the car guarded at the port, which added up to more than $133,000 just to keep it stored until it was passed a law that allowed him to circulate legally.

Your Ferrari “Sand Buggy”. In addition to a large collection of Porsches, cars from Ferrari, Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz have also paraded through Gates’ garage. According to what he said Walter Isaacson in his interview with Gates, the most popular of them was a Ferrari 348 that earned the nickname “sand buggy” after Gates got into the sand with it and started drifting with it.

In addition to different collector units and 911 variantscurrently the millionaire regularly drives a porsche taycana sports car fully electric with which Gates appears in some shots in his miniseries ‘And now what? The future according to Bill Gates‘.

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Image | Flickr (First Minister of Scotland), Unsplash (Jeff Cooper)