Perspective is a funny thing. What seems insurmountable to some can look very achievable to others. Sometimes that has to do with financial means, beneficial connections, or innate talents, but just as often the difference relies upon resourcefulness and the willingness to work hard and learn. It's all about one's frame of reference. From the outside looking in, it can be difficult or impossible to tell the difference, though. That's why it's smart to never jump to conclusions.

This 'Cuda—known as Striker—is a prime example. Just look at this thing. Have you ever seen a more high-end, every-trick-in-the book, custom E-Body show car? We haven't. This isn't some ordinary show car though. Striker competes at the highest level of the International Show Car Association (ISCA) show circuit against what are arguably the finest built custom cars in the world. Time and attention to detail are taken to extremes here. Judges will take flashlights and mirrors to inspect even completely hidden crevices of a car—things that are behind other panels or are purely structural.

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Creating cars good enough to stand up to this level of scrutiny takes time, and time at a shop good enough to build cars like this is not cheap, so it's not just common, but expected for price tags on these builds to cruise well into the high six-digit range. Actually, that would be a bargain; guys don't bat an eye at sinking $1 million into a car expected to garner first-place honors. Our favorite extreme example is Ross and Beth Myers' phenomenal '36 Ford coupe known as "First Love" that took the Ridler award in 2007. Built by Rad Rides by Troy over a period of three years, the rumored cost to build was just shy of $3 million. Yeah, really. Now that we've shifted your perspective a little bit, let's get back to Striker.

While most wouldn't call this a "budget build," to be competing and winning against cars at that level you'd expect that it came at a high cost. We won't tell you exactly what owner and builder Jesse Matlock has invested in Striker, but we'll tell you that it's about a tenth of what was spent on some of its notable competitors. But like we said, from the outside looking in, no one would expect that, certainly not the judges who awarded it the ISCA Street Machine Championship, nor the ones at Mopars at the Strip who awarded it the coveted World's Ultimate Mopar title. While he had set out from the very beginning to build a car that could win, having done so has left him floored. "Six months ago, I was a nobody in the field," Jesse told us. "Now, on the car-show circuit, everyone knows this car and my shop. It's been a wild ride so far."

While he's a bit humble about his pre-Striker days, it's not really accurate to say that he was completely off the radar. Long before Jesse opened his paint and body shop in downtown Dewey, OK, he latched onto a '66 Satellite when he was just old enough to drive. Jesse fell in love with the angular B-Body, and it made him a Mopar guy for life. In fact he still has that Satellite today and he still hops in it to run around to car shows and cruises. As he was fixing up that Satellite, Jesse knew that this would be his future—having an automotive shop. Or play pro baseball, whichever worked out.

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Baseball wasn't shaping up quite like he would have liked, so Jesse also spent time learning from the best mechanics and metal craftsmen that he could. He didn't start out with any particular edge, but he was determined to earn one through hard work. By 20 he was managing a body shop and by 26 he was ready to open his own shop: Jesse's Auto Body. As a way of both fueling his passion and showing off the abilities of his shop, Jesse rounded up a few more Mopar projects and quickly earned a reputation in the region as one of the go-to guys for doing serious over-the-top restorations on E-Bodies.

Back in the early 2000s, when the market for Hemi-powered cars was really starting to explode, Jesse just happened to finish a '70 Sublime Green Hemi 'Cuda hardtop clone for himself. The build generated a lot of buzz in the Mopar community because it was such a convincing clone that it offered some hope for those lamenting that they suddenly couldn't afford a factory Hemi 'Cuda. For a whole lot less, customers could now have essentially the exact same car, minus the little numbers on the dash, and 99 percent of the world would never know the difference. Jesse's phone started ringing a whole lot more because of that car, forcing him to expand his shop to two buildings and concentrate on late-model collision repair and restoration work at almost equal business levels.

Nevertheless, as is bound to happen with repetition, Jesse eventually began to grow bored with building the same cars over and over again, and looking over rows of identical restored cars at shows. He found that his eyes kept wandering over to the radical customs being turned out by famous builders, primarily on the West Coast, and he started thinking maybe he should try his hand at that type of build. Maybe even step it up a notch.

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After formulating a plan, the Sublime Hemi 'Cuda clone was sold in 2011 to finance the project and he started looking for the right car to turn into the most radical custom the Mopar world had ever seen. Considering his purist heavy clientele, it's not surprising that there has been some grumbling about the extensively modified E-Body. Our opinion is pretty obvious, but we would like to take the opportunity to remind everyone that they're not all sacred. Building custom cars actually saves more cars than it kills. For example, the starting point for Striker was hardly a glorious machine—a friend's parts car '71 318 Barracuda that was missing all of the valuable parts and had been sitting in an Oklahoma field for quite a while. Thankfully, Oklahoma is dry most of the year, so the remaining sheet metal was solid and (aside from the hood) everything you're looking at here is steel.

Back at his shop, the Barracuda was torn completely apart and the unibody set on a chassis jig so that Jesse could set the stance and suspension. Working with Patrick Haggerman, they came up with a unique custom-built 2x4 dual frame system with a triangulated four-link rear suspension and Ridetech Shockwaves supporting a narrowed 8.75-inch rearend. The front suspension began life as an Art Morrison crossmember and tubular control arm kit that was heavily modified so that it could be slammed to the ground with Shockwaves.

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A salvage yard Gen III Hemi out of a wrecked '09 SRT8 provided the basis for the motive power and allowed for a whole lot of test fitting and planning. Working on a seriously hectic schedule, Jesse wanted to debut the unfinished project at the 2013 SEMA show in Las Vegas, so he and his crew spent a lot of hours flailing on the body, fitting it to the suspension, and installing a set of large-by-huge Foose Nitrous II wheels with Mickey Thompson rubber. Even in mock-up form, the 'Cuda attracted a lot of attention from both attendees and vendors. Several vendors saw something special in the works and inquired about getting some of their parts included in the build—something that surprised Jesse. He went back to Oklahoma with some generous offers, but he had to deliver something worthy.

While Jesse's shop is well stocked, it doesn't feature any CNC machines, computer aided milling or cutting machines, or any of the big-league equipment you'd expect to be necessary to build something that could compete with cars out of shops like Foose, Ring Brothers, Roadster Shop, and so on.

Other than show-stopping looks, one primary goal of the build from the outset was to create something that would appeal directly to the younger crowd that might feel shut out by the rich guys, and prove to them that it could be done on a very reasonable budget—provided you were willing to work a little bit. Jesse likes to joke that Striker was built "Basically, with ball peen hammers and a screwdriver." That's not too far off. While there isn't a single piece of the body that hasn't been massaged, reshaped, or re-contoured, it was all done by hand the low-tech, old-fashioned way. Part of that was out of necessity, and part of it was a piece of the plan. From the very beginning Jesse wanted to balance extreme custom work with approachability. Making sure that car was mostly built using tools anyone could afford was a big part of that.

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As for those modifications, there are so many beneath the blinding red paint that they can be hard to spot. Every single piece of the 'Cuda has been modified, but yet it still feels like a 'Cuda. "Every time I did something, it had to complement something else to keep the flow," Jesse said. We'll give you a few of the major highlights and then let you stare at the pics and see what else you can find. To start, the rockers were extended two inches to meet the frame rails and then arch inward to form a bellypan that completely covers the chassis. The entire front clip is now one piece and is hinged for easy access to the engine bay, should that become necessary. The front and rear valences are custom-made and molded into the body and bumpers, all the glass is flush-mounted to the body, and the entire body is channeled down over the custom frame. Drip rails, door handles, locks, and side markers are all shaved, and the front fenders are extended down two inches. The engine bay is entirely made from scratch, and Jesse himself designed the most unique hood hinge mechanism we've ever seen. Yup, all this and more with general shop tools.

What started as a one-year project timeline grew into nearly six years with things still coming down to the wire for SEMA 2016. The big Hemi fired up for the first time in June 2016, the paint was laid in July and August, and then a rapid-fire reassembly of the entire car was underway with a constant eye on the calendar. Thirty days out from SEMA, Striker was sitting on the ground, it was running, it was painted, but the interior hadn't even been built. At Fast Al's Upholstery, Jesse and Aaron Lawrence spent more than five hundred hours putting the interior together, including building the custom instrument cluster. The only stock thing you'll find in the interior are the door handles.

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Jesse and crew did make it to SEMA where Striker was prominently displayed in VDO's booth and drew awe-inspired crowds all week. Since then things have only accelerated. In addition to winning the ISCA Street Machine Championship and World's Ultimate Mopar at Mopars at the Strip, Jesse and Striker have logged 102 days of travel and over 18,000 miles to various shows, and they're just getting started. Jesse wants to hit just about every major Mopar event in the country for the next couple of years, plus they'll be back at SEMA this year competing in Battle of the Builders, as well as GoodGuys for Street Machine of the Year, and even Hot August Nights. After that, he might go back for a second shot at the ISCA title.

Jesse has to be extra careful for now, but after all the madness dies down a bit, he's looking forward to driving Striker more. So far he's taken it to a couple of car shows and taken kids for rides, but he really wants to do more. "It's my spokesmodel. It's my car. It's me," Jesse told us. "I don't know what I would do without muscle cars in my life; it's my therapy. Hopefully I can show kids that they can build something like this, and inspire them to stay out of trouble and get out and get involved." Was Striker cheap? No, but who says you have to build an ISCA contender? If you can handle a torch and a hammer, and you have patience and shop around carefully, all you need is imagination and a determined work ethic. If you think it can't be done by the average guy at a pretty basic paint and body shop, you're looking at roughly 3,600 pounds of rumbling red evidence that it most certainly can.

See all 41 photos Builder Jesse Matlock did a host of mods to the '71 grille, but it still looks very "'Cuda" and would fit in a stock car. The headlights are completely custom and actually made up of four different headlight assemblies.

See all 41 photos Aaron Lawrence at Fast Al's Upholstery did an amazing job with the completely custom interior. Just about everything you see—seats, carpet, headliner, console, dash, sail panels—was hand built and done in a crazy 30-day period. There's also a complete Kicker Audio System grafted in, and all the gauges are VDO.

See all 41 photos That fantastically red paint is a Matrix custom mix. Jesse used MS42 high solid clear for most of the car, but used MS100 Matte finish clear to created the ghosted Hemi billboard.

See all 41 photos The fiberglass AAR hood had its framework stripped away so it could mate up with a one-off hydraulic and electrical lift system that actually raises the entire hood straight up at all four corners and brings it up to roof level.

See all 41 photos We don't have dyno numbers yet, but a boosted 6.1 is safely in the mid-500 to low 600hp range. Jesse will play with that more later, but for now, the jaw-dropping attention to detail are what most people looking under the hood are wowed by.

See all 41 photos Exhaust passes through the frame and exits through openings in the rockers ahead of the rear tires. The pipes and mufflers are entirely hidden between the floor and bellypan with exit holes for exhaust and heat to escape.

FAST FACTS

1971 Plymouth 'Cuda | Jesse Matlock | Dewey, OK

ENGINE

Type: 6.1 L Gen-III Hemi

Block: OEM SRT8 Challenger

Rotating assembly: stock crank, rods, and pistons

Cylinder heads: stock SRT8

Camshaft: stock SRT8

Induction: Magnuson supercharger

Exhaust: factory exhaust manifolds are ceramic coated, 3-inch mandrel bent

exhaust with Spin Tech mufflers

Cooling: custom aluminum radiator

DRIVETRAIN

Transmission: NAG1 5-speed automatic overdrive transmission from '09 Challenger

Rearend: narrowed 8 Mopar with Strange axles, 3.91 gears, and

Sure Grip differential

CHASSIS

Front suspension: modified Art Morrison with RideTech Shockwaves, Ride Pro and

Level Pro system with AirPod

Rear suspension: custom triangulated four-link with RideTech Shockwaves



brake lines, custom undedash brake pedal and master cylinder assembly

Chassis: modified Art Morrison and custom frame rails





