Plymouth Cuda 1971 Street Machine “Striker”

Built over roughly five years as a side project by Jesse’s Auto Body, this 1971 Plymouth Cuda ‘Striker’ debuted at SEMA 2016 wearing a Magnuson-supercharged 6.1-liter Hemi, an Art Morrison chassis, and a custom red interior that took more than 500 hours to complete. Almost nothing about it left the factory this way, reportedly only the door handles are stock. It’s the kind of no-compromise E-body build that defines what today’s restomod market chases.

The 1971 Plymouth Cuda Street Machine “Striker” built by Jesse’s Auto Body and debuted at The SEMA Show 2016….This Car is custom from front to back….To many changes to list but I will tell you it does have a full custom interior and a late model Supercharged HEMI under the hood…..And it is RED!! Have your say!!

Five years is a long time to spend on a car you’re not even working on full-time, longer than most people spend building an entire house, but that’s exactly how long one body shop poured into a side project that would eventually steal the show at the industry’s biggest stage. It started as a 1971 Plymouth Cuda, one of the most recognizable E-body shapes ever to leave Chrysler’s factory, but almost nothing about it stayed original by the time it was finished. Underneath the smoking-red paint sits a powerplant far removed from anything Plymouth ever offered from the factory, and the interior alone took over 500 hours to complete. When it finally rolled into the spotlight at SEMA, it didn’t just turn heads, it redefined what a “Cuda” could mean. What does it take to build a car this obsessively detailed as a side hustle?

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Five Years, One “Project Between a Project”

The car was built by Jesse Matlock of Jesse’s Auto Body, who reportedly described it as his “project between a project,” worked on over roughly five years before it debuted in the VDO booth at SEMA 2016.

The starting point was the swoopy fastback shape of the 1971 Cuda, one of the signature designs in Chrysler’s E-body lineup. From there, the build reportedly touched nearly every part of the car, front to back, with too many individual modifications to fully catalog.

A Magnuson-Supercharged Hemi and 500 Hours of Interior Work

Power comes from a Magnuson-supercharged 6.1-liter Hemi V8 paired with a NAG1 automatic transmission, all sitting on an Art Morrison custom chassis and rolling on Foose-designed Nitrous wheels, a serious departure from anything Plymouth ever bolted to a factory Cuda.

The interior is entirely custom and finished in matching red, including a hand-built instrument cluster. By some accounts, the door handles are the only parts of the entire car that are still stock, with more than 500 hours invested in the cabin alone.

SEMA build cars like Striker rarely go up for public sale, but they set the tone for what the E-body restomod market values: bespoke chassis work, modern supercharged power, and interior fabrication that rivals a coachbuilder, all of which keeps well-documented SEMA specials commanding outsized attention whenever they do change hands.

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