7 cars Elon Musk has owned — and we're not talking about Teslas (TSLA)

Before Tesla, Elon Musk had a lot of different cars.

Some got totaled, others inspired certain design elements in the cars Tesla makes today. Either way, each says a little bit about who Musk is as a person.

Scroll down for a look at the different cars Musk has owned:

The first car Musk bought was an old 1978 BMW 320i that he got for $1,400.

Musk said in a Forbes video that he bought it in 1994 and fixed it up himself. He had it for two years when one of the wheels fell off. That unfortunate incident happened when one of his interns from his first company, Zip2, was driving it.

When Musk got an initial bonus for Zip2, the web software company he and his brother co-founded, Musk used the money to buy a 1967 E-Type Jaguar.

Musk explained in the Forbes video that when he was 17 he was given a book of classic convertibles. The convertible he liked best from the book was the E-Type Jaguar, so he told himself if he ever could afford it he would buy one.

When he got an initial bonus check of $40,000 for Zip2, Musk bought the car.

"That one was like a bad girlfriend — it kept breaking down on me and causing me all sorts of trouble," Musk said of the car in the video.

After Musk sold PayPal, he bought a McLaren F1 — that he totaled.

"I had it for several years and I put 11,000 miles on it and I drove it from LA to San Francisco. I had it as a daily driver," Musk said of his McLaren F1 in an interview with Pando Daily three years ago.