RM520,000 for ‘WWW 1’

PETALING JAYA: The “WWW 1” vehicle registration number has set a new record as the most expensive combination to be sold in Malaysia with an all-time high bid of RM520,000.

Transport Minister Datuk Seri Kong Cho Ha said in a statement that the number surpassed the record set by “MCA 1” in 2010, which was sold for RM300,100.

“The WWW' series had also set its own record, in that 13 of the successful bids were worth more than RM100,000 and three of them went for RM300,000 each,” said Kong.

Kong said the total amount of bids received so far is more than RM64mil.

He said successful bids for the “WWW” series were estimated to rake in RM11.3mil, 10 times the collection received for other series.

“The highest number of bids (in this series) goes to WWW 333', which received 84 bids,” said Kong.

Kong revealed that of the 10,000 numbers in the series, 4,908 numbers have received bids while the remaining 5,091 will become running numbers that will be sold to the public.

He said letters informing bidders of the results would be sent out from June 6.

The ministry and Road Transport Department (JPJ) had earlier announced that the full results of the tender would be announced yesterday.

At the Kuala Lumpur JPJ headquarters in Wangsa Maju, hopeful bidders walked away disappointed as the results were not put up on the notice board.

Kong said the full results would only be released via JPJ's portal (www.jpj.gov.my) on Monday as the department needed more time to go through the large amount of bids an unprecedented 18,243 bids.

The bidding for the highly-coveted vehicle registration prefix started on April 30 and ended on May 14.

During the period, thousands thronged the three Kuala Lumpur JPJ branches to place bids, hoping to land the number of their choice with the “WWW” prefix, which is the acronym for “World Wide Web”.