This 1970 ‘Cuda Sat Dead Since 2018 — Now a Four-Person Crew Has 16 Months to Turn It Into a SEMA Showstopper

A forgotten 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda is getting a second life. Owner Corky Ullom has assembled a four-person crew with one unmovable goal: a finished, one-of-a-kind restomod on the SEMA 2027 show floor. Here’s how the series premiere kicks off the race against the clock.

A 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda has been sitting untouched since 2018, its restoration deferred so many times that even its owner had stopped talking about it out loud. Now that same forgotten shell is the center of a sixteen-month sprint toward one of the biggest stages in the custom car world: SEMA 2027. Owner Corky Ullom has assembled a small, wildly talented crew — a fabricator known as “Rocket Rob,” a painter and artist who goes by “Tatted Cat,” and a project manager tasked with keeping every decision tied to a budget and a calendar — to turn an empty shell into a build capable of standing among the show’s best. Before anyone can pick up a cutting torch, though, the team has to agree on what the car should even become, and in the opening minutes it’s clear nobody is picturing the same car. It is the kind of creative tension that makes for a genuinely compelling series premiere, not just a highlight reel of sparks and fresh paint.

A Forgotten Cuda and an Unmovable Deadline

The video is the first episode of “Corky’s Classics: Project CudaCat,” a new build series from MadLadTV chronicling the transformation of Ullom’s long-dormant 1970 ‘Cuda into a full custom restomod. The premise is simple to state and brutal to execute: design, fabricate, paint, assemble, test, and finish a one-of-a-kind ‘Cuda in time for SEMA 2027, all while the car starts the episode as little more than a bare shell. Ullom wants a build that still reads as an unmistakable ‘Cuda. Tatted Cat wants to push the design somewhere nobody has gone before. Rob has to figure out how to translate whichever vision wins into actual metal, and Adam is the one holding every decision up against the clock and the checkbook.

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That tug-of-war between staying faithful to the car’s identity and building something genuinely new is where the episode finds its energy. The stated goal, as the team lands on it, is “sinister elegance” — low, aggressive, unmistakably classic, and modern enough to look like it’s doing 100 mph while sitting still. Fans who’d followed the crew on social media before this premiere — several viewers mentioned tracking Tatted Cat’s work on Instagram long before the show existed — showed up ready to root for the outcome, and the top comments on the episode are full of people asking for longer cuts and more frequent updates.

The E-Body ‘Cuda That Started It All

The car at the center of this build carries real weight in muscle car history. The 1970 ‘Cuda was Plymouth’s first model built on Chrysler’s new E-body platform, a shorter, wider architecture introduced specifically to compete with the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro. The Dodge Challenger arrived on the same platform that same model year, riding a two-inch-longer wheelbase, which makes the ‘Cuda and Challenger close mechanical siblings from the same design generation this build is drawing on.

Where the 1970 ‘Cuda really made its case was under the hood. Buyers could choose from a lineup that started with a 340-cubic-inch V8 available at no extra cost and ran through a 383 as the standard performance engine at 335 horsepower, a 440 four-barrel Super Commando rated at 375 horsepower, a 440 Six Pack version at 390 horsepower, and the range-topping 426 Hemi at 425 horsepower. Motor Trend tested a Hemi ‘Cuda that year and recorded a 0-60 time of 5.8 seconds and a quarter-mile run of 14.0 seconds at 102 mph — numbers that still hold up more than five decades later.

The Hemi ‘Cuda in particular has become one of the most sought-after muscle cars ever built, largely because so few exist. Plymouth built roughly 666 Hemi ‘Cudas for 1970, only 14 of them convertibles, and today a well-documented hardtop can bring around $230,000 while surviving convertibles have sold for well over $500,000, with the rarest examples pushing past $3 million at auction. That engineering pedigree and scarcity are part of why a bare 1970 ‘Cuda shell is worth sixteen months of a four-person team’s time in the first place: whatever CudaCat ultimately becomes, it’s built on one of the most respected and valuable chassis of the entire muscle car era.

Why This Build Is Worth Following

What separates Project CudaCat from a typical build video is the format itself. Rather than a single before-and-after reveal, MadLadTV is treating this as a season-long series, which means viewers get to watch the actual decision-making — the arguments over concept, the budget trade-offs, the moment a bare shell has to become an actual plan — instead of just the finished product. That transparency is rare in the build-show world, and it’s clearly resonating: the comments on the premiere are dominated by fans asking for longer episodes and a faster release schedule, a strong signal for a series that just introduced itself.

The stakes are also unusually concrete. SEMA is the industry’s biggest annual showcase for custom builds, and putting a finished car on that floor in under a year and a half leaves almost no room for the project to stall. Every fabrication choice Rob makes and every paint direction Tatted Cat pushes for has to survive contact with that deadline, and the parts and materials partners already attached to the build — from paint suppliers to a custom Rockford Fosgate audio system — suggest this isn’t a shoestring garage project so much as a genuine industry showcase in the making.

For a car that had been sitting quietly since 2018, that’s about as dramatic a second act as a ‘Cuda could ask for. What started as an unmovable dream car is now on a countdown clock, with a crew that clearly has something to prove and a fan base already invested before a single body panel has been cut. If the team can hold onto that “sinister elegance” concept through sixteen months of budget fights, fabrication setbacks, and last-minute paint decisions, CudaCat has a real shot at being one of the more talked-about E-body builds to hit SEMA in years — and this premiere is the only chance viewers get to see the idea before the metal starts taking shape.

Watch the full video above. Share your thoughts in the comments below.