805 HP 1970 Plymouth Cuda Custom Restomod & Engine Sound

Jeff Schwartz of Schwartz Performance Inc. spent two years turning a 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda into something far more than a restoration: a Pearl Orange Metallic restomod packing 805 horsepower from a 426 Hemi, built on a modern chassis and engineered to handle like a road-ready race car. The shape is instantly familiar. Almost everything underneath it isn’t.

A 1970 ‘Cuda with a 426 Hemi under the hood sounds like a numbers-matching collector’s dream — until you learn that almost nothing under this particular car’s skin is original anymore. Jeff Schwartz, the owner of a Woodstock, Illinois shop that specializes in exactly this kind of transformation, spent two years turning a familiar silhouette into something else entirely: a modern race car wearing 1970 sheet metal. The Pearl Orange paint alone is enough to stop traffic on any street it drives down. What’s happening underneath it, according to the man who actually built it, is a much bigger story than paint and horsepower alone.

Same Shape, Completely New Guts

From the outside, this ‘Cuda reads as a faithfully restored 1970 Plymouth — the fastback roofline, the shaker hood, the aggressive stance are all instantly recognizable to anyone who knows the model. But Jeff Schwartz, who built the car at Schwartz Performance Inc., is upfront that virtually everything beneath that familiar shape is new: a modern chassis, modern suspension geometry, and a build philosophy that treats the original body as a starting point rather than something to be preserved completely untouched from end to end.

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805 Horsepower From a 426 Hemi

The headline number is 805 horsepower from a 426 Hemi — a figure that dwarfs anything Chrysler’s factory Hemi ever produced in a production ‘Cuda, which topped out well under half that output even in its most aggressive street tune back in period. Getting there required extensive internal work, and it’s the kind of number that only makes sense in the context of a car built from the ground up to actually handle that much power, rather than a numbers-matching original simply pushed past its factory limits and hoping for the best.

Two Years, One Build

Schwartz says the car took two full years to complete, a timeline that reflects the true scope of what a genuine frame-off restomod actually involves from start to finish. Unlike a straightforward restoration, where the goal is returning a car to its exact factory specification, a build like this requires custom fabrication at nearly every single stage — chassis, suspension geometry, wiring, cooling — all engineered together to support both the horsepower figure and the modern road-ready handling the finished car is designed to deliver on demand.

Pearl Orange Metallic and the Art of Restomod Presentation

The Pearl Orange Metallic paint is a deliberate choice that signals exactly what kind of build this is before anyone even hears the engine fire up: bold, modern, and unapologetically different from a period-correct restoration job. Restomod culture has increasingly leaned into paint and finish choices that wouldn’t have existed on a factory build sheet in 1970, using color deliberately as a way to visually separate a modernized car from an original without changing its recognizable, iconic proportions in the process.

What ‘Road Ready Race Car’ Actually Means

Describing the finished ‘Cuda as a modern road-ready race car isn’t just marketing language — it reflects a specific engineering target that Schwartz Performance builds are known for across the shop’s whole portfolio: cars that can be driven comfortably on the street but handle, stop, and accelerate closer to a purpose-built race car than a 1970 original ever realistically could. That dual capability is the entire premise behind the shop’s approach to restomods, and it’s a significant part of why builds like this one command attention well beyond typical restoration circles and forums.

The Schwartz Performance Reputation

Located at 1115 Rail Dr in Woodstock, Illinois, Schwartz Performance Inc. has built a name specifically around frame and chassis work for hot rods and muscle cars, and this ‘Cuda is presented as a direct showcase of that specialty for potential customers. For builders and enthusiasts researching a restomod project of their own, a car like this one functions as a portfolio piece — proof of exactly what the shop’s chassis engineering can support when paired with serious horsepower under the hood.

Why This Build Resonates Beyond Mopar Fans

Even outside the Mopar community, builds like this 805-horsepower ‘Cuda matter because they represent where high-end restomod culture has been heading for years now: preserving the visual identity of an icon while replacing everything structural underneath it with modern engineering. A car that looks like 1970 and drives like a current-generation performance machine bridges two very different audiences — nostalgia-driven collectors and modern performance enthusiasts — in a way a straight restoration or a purely custom build simply can’t manage on its own.

805 Horsepower in Historical Context

It’s worth putting 805 horsepower in context against what the original 426 Hemi actually delivered when it debuted in the mid-1960s: Chrysler’s factory rating was 425 horsepower, a figure widely understood even at the time to be conservative for insurance purposes. Nearly doubling that output in a modern build isn’t simply a matter of bolting on aftermarket parts — it demands a completely reengineered bottom end, cooling system, and drivetrain capable of handling loads the original Hemi architecture was never designed around, which is exactly the kind of ground-up engineering a shop like Schwartz Performance specializes in delivering.

Why the Story Needed a Longer Format

The choice to feature this particular build on My Car Story with Lou Costabile also matters — the show has built its own reputation specifically around in-depth conversations with builders and owners rather than quick walkarounds, giving Jeff Schwartz the space to explain not just what the car is, but why every major decision behind it was made the way it was. That format suits a build this complex particularly well, since a car this heavily reengineered has a lot more story to tell than its paint color and horsepower number alone could ever convey on their own.

Taken as a whole, this ‘Cuda represents a build philosophy that has only grown more mainstream across the muscle car world in the years since: honor the silhouette, replace the engineering. Whether that approach appeals to a given viewer or not, it’s clearly resonating with a wide audience well beyond the Mopar faithful, and a build this thoroughly documented gives both camps — purists and restomod fans alike — plenty to actually argue about.

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