10 People Who Changed the World — And What They Drove

The enduring image of Steve Jobs — balding, bespectacled, turtlenecked — suggests an exacting taskmaster, one who tinkered obsessively over every little detail of a new product. But the late genius's more daring side is best seen in this famous image, in which a hirsute 27-year-old Jobs tools around Silicon Valley on a 1966 BMW R60/2 motorcycle. The 600cc boxer-twin 2-wheeler was already a classic by the time the picture was taken for a 1982 issue of National Geographic magazine titled "High Tech, High Risk, and High Life in Silicon Valley" — and1982, you'll recall, was two years before the original Macintosh computer was released.

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Rock stars, according to cliché, should drive Rolls-Royces and Ferraris. John Lennon, one of the biggest rock stars the world has ever known, owned both. In fact, his first car was a 1965 Ferrari 330 GT 2+2 Coupe. But more telling, perhaps, is the last car owned by the Beatle, a 1972 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon. It is said that he preferred the wagon because it allowed him and his family to travel in relative anonymity. After all, unlike, say, Lennon's iconic Rolls-Royce Phantom with the psychedelic paint scheme, no one peers into a station wagon expecting to see a legend.

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Prime Minister Winston Churchill was an unapologetic champion of everything British — with the exception of French champagne. He stayed true to form in his choice of cars, including the Daimler DB18 Drophead Coupe that carried him through the 1944 and 1949 election campaigns. And lest you think the Nazis' most vocal opponent drove a German car, know this: Despite being named for Gottlieb Daimler, German-born engineer and inventor of the world's first car, the company that built Churchill's car — which boasted a top speed of 76 mph — was an English firm based in Coventry, separate from Daimler AG, based in Stuttgart, Germany.

Bing Images: Daimler DB18 Drophead Coupe

Elvis Presley's love for the automobile is common knowledge; his propensity for buying Cadillacs and other high-end cars as gifts for friends was one of his many oft-cited character quirks. One of the most memorable of the King's large fleet of cars is this Stutz Blackhawk, a 19-foot long, V8-powered behemoth based on the Pontiac Grand Prix chassis. During its short production run, the Stutz was in high demand by entertainment luminaries: Willie Nelson, Al Pacino, Elton John, Paul McCartney and Lucille Ball each owned one. Elvis and Frank Sinatra even competed for the first production model; the car went to Elvis when Sinatra refused to be photographed with it.

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Amelia Earhart might be best-known for her exploits in the air, but she was equally pioneering while traversing the ground, driving America's first front-wheel-drive car with independent front suspension, the Cord Model 810. (Front-wheel-drive vehicles were not commonly found in the U.S. until decades later, in the 1980s.) The 125-horsepower Lycoming V8-powered car had a number of other firsts and notable features, including variable-timing automatic windshield wipers, a rear-hinged hood and a radio. The Cord brand folded in 1937, the same year Earhart disappeared while trying to circumnavigate the globe.

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Michael Jordan didn't invent the above-the-rim style of basketball — Dr. J and others beat him to that — but what he did do was take it to a new level, becoming the best and most dominant basketball player of all time while redefining how athletes create and manage their own brands. He's also a fan of fast cars, owning high-horsepower machines from Mercedes-Benz, Corvette and Ferrari throughout the years. One of the most famous car-related images of Jordan is His Airness sitting in his black Ferrari 512TR Testarossa for the 1993 book "Rare Air."

Bing: Michael Jordan and His Ferrari Testarossa

Mark Zuckerberg created in Facebook a product that celebrates putting your private information, thoughts and pictures online for the world to see. Last year the pop-culture and gossip website Gawker decided to turn the tables on Zuckerberg, sending a photographer to trail him, paparazzo-style, around Silicon Valley. One thing they discovered: One of the world's youngest billionaires drives an entry-level near-luxury sedan, the Acura TSX. And it's several years old, at that. Considering that even a brand-new, top-of-the-line TSX runs less than $40,000, and that Zuckerberg's estimated net worth runs in the neighborhood of $13.5 billion, the young man's work-obsessed, nonmaterialistic reputation seems more than justified.

Compare: Acura TSX vs. Audi 3 vs. Buick Regal

Nobel Peace Prize winner and first African-American president of the United States, Barack Obama now travels in a custom-made, Cadillac presidential limousine nicknamed The Beast. But back when he was mere Sen. Obama from Illinois, the man piloted a Chrysler 300 sedan around Washington, D.C. He sold the inefficient 300 shortly before starting his presidential bid, swapping the Hemi-powered large sedan for a more fuel-frugal 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid. Obama learned to drive in a Ford; specifically, a Ford Granada that belonged to his grandfather, which he later joked in an interview "may be the worst car that Detroit ever built."

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The first lady of cinema always did things her way. A phenomenal athlete and outspoken critic of censorship who favored masculine clothes and had a passion for painting, Katharine Hepburn also garnered an amazing 10 Oscar nominations for her film roles, including "The Philadelphia Story," "Woman of the Year," "The African Queen" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," all while redefining how a woman behaves in Hollywood, on-screen and off. Hepburn for a time drove a 1965 Chrysler Imperial Crown convertible, a big car befitting her big personality. At almost 19 feet long and more than 6 feet wide, the V8-powered Imperial Crown was a truly dominating presence — like Hepburn.

View Slideshow:  Cars of "Mad Men"

No surprises here: The father of the automotive assembly line drove his namesake. What's interesting is how he drove it; piloting a 1920 Model T from 1920 to 1931, Ford used his personal vehicle as a drivable test bed for new parts, including a nickel-plated radiator. It was a habit Ford continued throughout his life and work. Take, for instance, the famous picture of Ford swinging an ax at a car's trunk. Many people believe this to be Ford demonstrating the strength of the world's first plastic car, the 1941 Ford "soybean car" made from soybean-derived ethanol.

View Slideshow:  Made in the USA

Josh Condon, editor of MSN Autos' Exhaust Notes blog, has covered everything from nanotechnology to champagne and caviar for the likes of The New York Times, Popular Science, Men's Journal, Cargo and RL Magazine. He's recently relocated from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Los Angeles and is spending way, way more time in his car as a result.

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