For those who don't know, in Malaysia the license plate format consists of one or more letters (the first letter(s) serving as a vehicle or location prefix) followed by up to four numerical digits with no leading zeros.
The location prefix start with a letter of the alphabet defining one of its states where the vehicles are registered, for example; cars in Penang island carried plates with prefix "P" and "M" are cars registered in Malacca.
Lets say you want your car plate to be MCA1, you will have to wait until the number of cars registered in Malacca reached that sequence, that can take YEARS!
If you are not Malaysian, you probably wonder who would pay that kind of money for that plate. Wikipedia explains...
Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) (simplified Chinese: 马来西亚华人公会; traditional Chinese: 馬來西亞華人公會; pinyin: Mǎláixīyà Huárén Gōnghuì; Cantonese: MaLoiSaiYa WahYen KoongWui; Malay: Persatuan Cina Malaysia) is a uni-racial political party in Malaysia that represents the Malaysian Chinese ethnicity; it is one of the three major component parties of the ruling coalition in Malaysia called the Barisan Nasional (BN) in Malay, or National Front in English.
Not only that...
Through its substantial holding of companies such as Huaren Holdings, MCA also controls five other significant media press companies, i.e., The Star, being Malaysia's best-selling English language newspaper Sin Chew Jit Poh, Nanyang Siang Pau, and China Press, being three of the best-selling Chinese newspapers in Kuala Lumpur and Central Region of West Malaysia; and Guang Ming Daily.
So did the MCA1 plate went to MCA big boss's car? I don't know, may be my Malaysian reader can enlighten me?
Very soon car registration in Kuala Lumpur will reach the WWW sequence and understandably in our internet society the World Wide Web plate will be a very hot item!
The licence plate number WWW 1 will likely set a record as the most expensive vehicle registration number in Malaysia. The price could hit RM500,000 (NZ$198,589) when bidding starts on April 30, according to news report.
The media quoted Malaysian Federal Territory Road Transport Department director Nadzri Osman as saying that it was possible to reach that figure as they had already received several offers that exceeded RM400,000.
What about that plate in New Zealand?
Drivers in NZ are lucky that they can purchase personalised plate for their car as long as no one owns it. We can purchase plate WWW, not in Malaysia though; in Malaysia you must have at lease one digit; thus WWW1 is the only way.
A quick on line search at plates.co.nz told me...
Someone bought the WWW plate and is willing to resell it at NZ$75,000!
What about WWW1?
Nope, it was sold!
But you can have WWW2, this plate is still available; forget about WWW8, WWW88 or WWW888; they were all sold at less than NZ$600 each. $599 is the present going price for a personalised plate in New Zealand.
As for yours truly, I am sticking with my personalised plate which I
bought for NZ$320.00 when we landed here in 1988. :) My first car with
that plate on was a used Honda Civic 1,200.
One year later the same plate was transferred to a new Civic 1,500 two door.My plate landed on a new Mazda 323 1,600 in 1996 when we returned from Singapore... I can't find any picture of that! The next car was a Mazda 3.
The Mazda 3 served me well for 5 years before shedding its plate on my present Lancer VRX 2.4 Sportback.
You can't get more personalised than CYLEOW as my car plate!
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