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Dubai Businessman Pays $9 Million for Personalized License Plate

If you're a millionaire in Dubai, you are basically part of their middle class, because the average annual income for people there is roughly $200,000 with many folks making more than $2 million every year. And that's why no one was really shocked when they heard the news that an Indian businessman lived up to Dubai's reputation for crazy spending when he spent $9 million on a single-digit license plate for his Rolls-Royce.

At Gwinnett Place Body Shop, we hear numbers like this and are amazed. If someone in Duluth, GA spent more than several hundred dollars on a license plate that would be astounding, but $9 million? It seems tremendously high and excessive, but in Dubai, money seemingly grows on trees (or actually on oil platforms).

The man's name is Balwinder Sahani, an Indian-born property developer living in Dubai, who won plate number D5 at a government auction  in late October. This isn't the only time that Sahani won a low-number plate at another auction. He describes himself as a "very simple man", but previously dropped almost $7 million dollars on plate O9 at an auction in 2015 for his other Rolls-Royce, and picked up a second, unnamed plate at another auction for only $272,000-- a great deal considering the other expenditures.

Sahani looks at the money he spends collecting license plates as a form of philanthropy and his way of performing public service. Dubai has zero income tax, and the money spent chasing privileged license plates goes right to Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority.

Sahani was happy to be giving back to the city he loves and cherishes, even though he grew up in India. "This city has given me a lot," he said. "To give this money to the city in a special way while getting the license plate I truly desire is something I will never forget. Now I can drive in Dubai with pride and with my head held high."

Single-digit license plates are in high demand as status symbols by the mega-rich and powerful in Dubai and the lower the number the higher the price. Back in 2008, a businessman named Saeed Al Khouri in Abu Dhabi set a record by paying $14 million for plate number 1.

These displays of eye-catching consumption are all the rage in the Emirates. In 2015, a set of gold and diamond encrusted tires known as "The Most Expensive Tires in the World" by the Guinness Book of Records sold in Dubai for approximately $600,000.

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Sources: MSN, Yahoo and Car and Driver