Plymouth Cuda 1971 Street Machine “Striker”

A five-year side project between paying jobs turned this 1971 Plymouth Cuda into a SEMA showstopper, powered by a Magnuson-supercharged Hemi V8 sitting on a custom Art Morrison chassis. More than 500 hours went into the interior alone, leaving the door handles as the only stock parts left on the entire car. Read on to see what it takes to build something this obsessively detailed as a side hustle.

Five years is longer than most people spend building an entire house, and that is roughly how long one small body shop poured into a side project that would eventually steal the show at the industry’s biggest stage. It started life as a 1971 Plymouth Cuda, one of the most recognizable E-body shapes Chrysler ever built, but by the time it rolled into the spotlight almost nothing about it remained original. Underneath a smoking-red paint job sits a powerplant far removed from anything Plymouth ever offered from the factory, and the interior alone reportedly took more than 500 hours to finish. What does it actually take to build a car this obsessively detailed as a project squeezed in between other jobs?

A ‘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 across roughly five years before it finally debuted in the VDO booth at the 2016 SEMA Show in Las Vegas. That kind of timeline is not unusual for a builder tackling a comprehensive custom job around paying customer work, but it does mean the car represents years of accumulated decisions, revisions, and refinements rather than a single cohesive build plan executed all at once.

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Starting With One Of Chrysler’s Best Shapes

The starting point was the swoopy fastback profile of the 1971 Cuda, one of the signature designs in Chrysler’s short-lived E-body lineup that also included the Dodge Challenger, and a shape widely regarded by collectors as the high point of Barracuda styling before Chrysler discontinued the model after 1974. From that foundation, the build reportedly touched nearly every panel and system on the car, front to back, with too many individual modifications to fully catalog in any single writeup.

A Supercharged Hemi Nobody Bolted On In 1971

Power comes from a Magnuson-supercharged 6.1-liter Hemi V8 paired with a NAG1 five-speed automatic transmission, a drivetrain combination that did not exist anywhere in Chrysler’s lineup when the original 1971 Cuda left the factory. Magnuson’s TVS-style supercharger has become a popular choice among modern Mopar builders precisely because it bolts onto Chrysler’s later-generation Hemi crate engines with relatively little modification, delivering forced-induction power without the packaging headaches of a traditional Roots blower poking through the hood.

An Art Morrison Chassis Underneath

The entire car sits on an Art Morrison custom chassis, a specialist aftermarket frame commonly used in high-end restomod builds specifically because it allows a vintage body to accept modern suspension geometry, larger brakes, and far more usable horsepower than any factory frame from the era was ever engineered to handle. Foose-designed Nitrous wheels finish the rolling stock, another signal of a build assembled from top-tier aftermarket components rather than restored factory parts.

More Than 500 Hours Inside The Cabin Alone

The interior is entirely custom and finished in matching red, including a hand-built instrument cluster fabricated specifically for this car rather than adapted from an existing gauge cluster. By some accounts, the door handles are the only components on the entire vehicle that remain stock, with more than 500 hours invested in the cabin alone, a number that puts the interior work roughly on par with a part-time job stretched across several months.

Why SEMA Is The Stage That Matters

The SEMA Show functions as the aftermarket automotive industry’s biggest annual showcase, where builders, parts manufacturers, and shops debut their most ambitious work in front of an audience that includes potential customers, sponsors, and industry press all at once. Landing a build inside a sponsor’s booth, as Striker did with VDO, represents a significant validation for a shop like Jesse’s Auto Body, turning years of unpaid side-project labor into direct exposure that a standard restoration job could never generate on its own.

What Builds Like This Do To The Restomod Market

SEMA build cars like Striker rarely go up for public sale, but they set the tone for what the E-body restomod market values most: bespoke chassis work, modern supercharged power, and interior fabrication that rivals a professional coachbuilder. Those priorities keep well-documented SEMA specials commanding outsized attention whenever they do change hands, often outperforming even numbers-matching original Cudas in terms of pure headline value despite carrying none of the factory’s original hardware.

Where Builds Like This Fit In The Bigger Picture

Striker arrived at a moment when the broader muscle car aftermarket had already shifted heavily toward exactly this kind of build, full custom chassis, modern supercharged crate engines, and interior work indistinguishable from a high-end custom shop rather than a factory restoration. Specialty chassis manufacturers, aftermarket supercharger companies, and custom interior shops all compete for placement on high-profile builds precisely because a SEMA debut functions as a live advertisement, and shops that land a standout build in a major sponsor’s booth routinely see a direct increase in customer inquiries afterward. That commercial reality is part of why independent shops like Jesse’s Auto Body are willing to sink years of unpaid labor into a single project, the exposure alone can reshape a small shop’s entire customer base for years to come.

The Money Side Of A Five-Year Build

Shops rarely disclose a total price tag for a project like this, but comparable supercharged-Hemi Pro Touring E-body builds from top-tier shops routinely run into six figures once a custom chassis, a forced-induction crate engine, and hundreds of hours of interior fabrication are all added together. That price reality is exactly why builds of this depth stay rare no matter how much attention they draw at a show like SEMA, most shops simply cannot absorb years of unpaid labor on a single car without the kind of exposure and follow-on commission work a debut like this is specifically designed to generate.

A Different Kind Of Collectible

A car like this occupies a different collector category entirely from an original, numbers-matching Hemi ‘Cuda, valued not for factory-correct parts but for the craftsmanship, documented build story, and show pedigree attached to it. For a shop willing to invest five years of intermittent labor into a single project, that kind of recognition, and the commissions it can generate afterward, is very often the entire point.

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