In 1996 LKY went to Malaysia to visit Dr. Mahathir. Mahathir is the person who almost single handedly created the Malaysian car industry. So when LKY came to visit, Dr. M eagerly showed LKY his Proton Saga factory - "Here we invested $300M, paid Mitsubitshi $100M for technology transfers, and invested $50M for branding.
Now we are ready to make money, we can sell each Proton Saga car for $30,000". LKY laughed and said, "Oh... too much trouble, we print this certificate called the COE that costs 5 cents a piece, and sell them to our citizens for $40,000