Bufori La Joya MkIII: Retro Aussie Car Returns Home

Motoring Channel Staff - 13/August/2007

Sydney, Australia — Anyone remember the Bufori Mk I? It was an Australian designed and built sports car mimicking the design of classic coupes from the1930s. Lightweight and fairly agile, the Bufori name is returning home later this year in limited numbers.

The successor to the original Bufori will be heading back to Australia with the kinds of bells and whistles that not even a BMW or Mercedes can offer.

Re-entering the Australian marketplace shortly after its public debut at the upcoming '07 Sydney Motor Show in October, the Bufori La Joya MkIII is decadently finished. The cabin sports 100% Persian silk carpets, French polished walnut dash and 24 karat gold-plated instrumentation. There even an optional 24 karat solid gold bonnet emblem!

Power for the Bufori La Joya MkIII comes from a bespoke 2.7-litre V6 engine outputting 172kW, transferred to the rear wheels via an automatic tip tronic gearbox.

"The quality of the engineering and construction on these cars is simply amazing," said Bufori Australia's marketing manager, Cameron Pollard. "We believe they stand comparison with the finest marques in the world," he added. 

In mid 1980s the Bufori Mk1 was a retro 2-seater sports car hand-built by brothers Anthony, George and Gerry Khouri, from their Parramatta Road premises in Sydney. They took the operation to Malaysia in 1998, and now the company builds more than 300 vehicles a year, which are exported to Europe, America, and all over Asia and the Middle East.

The name "La Joya" is Spanish for "The Jewel" and befitting such a name Bufori allows buyers the option of mounting their choice of precious gemstones anywhere on the vehicle.

"This is a car that will appeal to discerning individuals and we are confident that there is a market for it in Australia. We've been selling cars all over the world but we are still Australian-owned and consider ourselves Aussie at heart. We're thrilled to make a select number of vehicles available to the Australian market," Mr Pollard said.

At this stage Bufori hasn't indicated how many cars it plans to import into Australia or how much they would cost.

The body of the La Joya's bodywork is constructed from lightweight carbon fibre and kevlar materials which ensure the car is rigid by light. Combined withquad cam 172kW V6 engine, the Aussie car can accelerate from zero to 100km/h in a claimed 6.7 seconds.

Even though it has a long hood, the retro sports cars' engine is mid-mounted, located just ahead of the rear axle. This provides the car with an ideal 50:50 front to rear weight distribution. Together with sports suspension consisting of race-style double wishbones (with adjustable dampers), the La Joya should be very lively to drive.

Features such as 14-way adjustable electronic sports luxury seats will be offered, and things like voice activated bluetooth telephone and satellite navigation system, plus front/rear audio-visual proximity parking sensor system can also be had.

ESP appears to be absent from the current features list, but ABS, EBD, driver's airbag, seatbelt pre-tensioners, and a tyre-pressure monitoring system will be included when the cars come to Australia.