World’s most expensive license plate

Talal Khouri, a Dubai-based stockbroker, made history recently when he became the owner of the world’s most expensive license plate. He won the expensive license plate after placing the winning bid during an auction to benefit individuals with special needs. Oddly, the expensive license plate displayed the number five. You would think the most expensive license plate in the world would at least read ‘1’ or maybe something clever alluding to the owner’s wealth.

Well, now it does.

Saeed Khouri (right), a businessman from a wealthy Abu Dhabi family, recently purchased a license plate emblazoned with the number one from an auction that sold around ninety other vanity plates. The auction brought in $24 million which, ironically enough, will benefit a rehabilitation center for victims of traffic accidents. $14 million of that came from the sale of the ‘1’ plate.

Comparatively, only $6.2 million was paid for the ‘5’ plate. That price was almost ten times as much as the former most expensive license plate, ‘M1’, which fetched about $660,000 in Yorkshire, Northern England.

Reporters asked Talal Khouri if the number ‘5′ had any special or sentimental meaning to him. “The number does not mean anything to me. I will keep it and after my death it will be re-auctioned and probably raise more money that will again be given to charity and humanitarian work,” he added.

The owner of the current most expensive license plate, on the other hand, was not so humble. He reportedly said of the purchase, “I bought it because it’s the best number. I bought it because I want to be the best in the world.”

Unlike standard license plates in the UAE, these vanity plates include only a single Western digit and no Arabic letters or numerals.

In Malaysia....

The car registration number plate "KCT 1", issued by the Kedah Road Transport Department, belongs to pop queen Datuk Siti Nurhaliza Tarudin.

Her husband, Datuk Seri Khalid Mohamad Jiwa, had outbid a number of bidders to present Siti with the "personalised" registration number which represents the combination of their names. Khalid was the highest bidder with RM66,550.

It is not immediately known if Khalid would buy his wife a new car to go with the "exclusive" registration number plate although she has a car.

Siti Nurhaliza had won a Nissan X-Trail after being proclaimed the "Most Popular Artiste" during the "Anugerah Bintang Popular Berita Harian 2009" in April.

State RTD director Abdul Rahman Hussein declined to give details of the bidding.

However, it was learnt that bids for "KCT 1" were among the highest ever received by the department in recent years.

Siti Nurhaliza yesterday denied newspaper reports that she had submitted the bid but, instead, claimed it was her husband who had done it. She said she would never fork out such a huge sum just for a car registration number plate.

Recently, in Terengganu, the registration number plate bearing "TAY 1" fetched RM200,000.

The record in Terengganu stands at RM200,090, which was paid for the number plate "TAN 1".