There’s now an easier way to score vanity plates for your Toyota Yaris

Dubai is no stranger to its residents lusting after – and paying enormous amounts of money for – unique license plates.

Remember last year when an Indian businessman spent Dhs33 million at an auction to become the proud owner of a plate that simply read ‘D5’? Yes, we couldn’t believe it at the time either.

In what we can only imagine is an effort to spice up the hunt for avid plate collectors, the Road and Transport Authority (RTA) has launched a new service allowing motorists to search the availability of license plates and purchase them directly via their website.

The system allows you to search using a combination of four criteria: the letter at the beginning of the plate (A through Z), the digit length of the plate (from 1 to 5 digits), a specific number itself, and the price ranging up to Dhs2 million.

We plugged in a few numbers that we thought would look cool adorning the front and back of our Toyota Yaris, including ‘A1’, ‘E2020’ and ‘D1337’, but the search spat back that the numbers were either already owned by someone or unavailable. Go figure.

Querying the system for the most expensive plates it had to offer revealed the following:

We’re not sure why the number 8997 would run up a price tag of close to Dhs800,000, but compared to Dhs33 million, it’s a relative bargain.

Another neat feature of the service is that customers are able to search out numbers that have yet to be issued, potentially reserving them for a future date as and when they become available.

Have a favourite number you’d like to nab for your license plate? Hit up the RTA website to have a look, maybe you’ll have more luck than we did.

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Images: RTA