Lost-and-found ’76 Jaguar XJ12L
When people ask Dwight Morse what he’s doing with a ‘76 Jaguar XJ12L, he tends to respond, “How many people do you know in your lifetime who won a Jaguar selling vacuum cleaners door to door?”
The Jaguar is his father’s trophy car, which he scored in a contest while working as a division manager for the Electrolux vacuum cleaner company.
Electrolux had hatched an incentive plan to increase employee retention. At the time, Morse was working with his father, Dwight, as a branch manager.
“Whoever came in first (for retention) in the nation won” one of two Jaguars, Morse said.
“We decided that we were going to win that car for him. So, we ended up being first in the nation. He got to pick his Jaguar out brand new off the showroom floor in Houston … and they awarded it to him at a big convention we had in Galveston, Texas, at the Flagship Hotel.”
He pointed out a shadowbox containing old photos, a striped newsboy cap, and vintage photographs of the elder Dwight Morse posing with the Jaguar he had won. In one photo, Morse’s father leans casually against the Jaguar, hands in pockets and a grin on his face. He wears the same newsboy cap the younger Dwight Morse has retained in the shadowbox.
“This is some of the paperwork and things that show him from Electrolux in 1976, announcing that he was the winner of the vehicle … and then pictures that we took while we were down there, getting the car. Then also, the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith did an article about it.”
The Jaguar XJ12L fell on hard times after Morse’s mother hired a mechanic in a transaction that turned out to be ill-conceived.
“Where she went to church, they had a mechanic there that used to work for Cadillac, and he had his own shop there by the church.” Something was awry with the electronic ignition/fuel injector. “He said, ‘I can take care of that for you, and I can make it run,’” Morse said. “Anyway, long story short, he couldn’t and didn’t.”
The mechanic went out of business and absconded with all the vehicles that had been in the shop, including the Morse family Jaguar. After searching for a couple of years, Morse located him. “He had hidden the car … behind an old abandoned house … sitting under a tree. It did not look anything like it did whenever
dad had it.”
He bought his father’s Jaguar back off the mechanic, who charged a “storage fee.” By that time, the car’s title had been changed and placed in the mechanic’s name following the senior Morse’s death.
“That’s basically how I recovered the car,” Morse said.
“This particular (Jaguar), especially the XJ12 — ‘75 and ‘76 were the first few years that they came out with electronic fuel injection. They came out with a V12 back in the late ’60s,” he said.
“The Jaguar was very small at that time. So, they built a sedan. The sedan is 4 inches longer on the inside than what the coupe is. At the time they built these they were supposed to be, according to Jaguar, the fastest car on the road … could go up to 140 miles an hour. These cars — they’re actually a luxury car. They’re not made to drag race with, but on an open highway they will fly, and the suspension underneath it — the faster it goes the better the suspension is.”
After recouping his father’s XJ12L, Morse worked with Russo’s Rods & Restorations to restore the Jaguar to a finer condition while preserving as much of its original character as possible.
“(We) got to talking about it, and I decided to put a GM motor in it … so I settled on a LT1 … a little over 460 horsepower, and it’s all fuel injection.”
However, the motor did not fit properly. Morse and his mechanic ordered custom-made stainless steel exhaust headers. “They had a kit sent down for him (the mechanic) to get everything … so they could exhaust it properly, then they took that kit and sent (it) back and manufactured stainless steel identical to the kit. Everything fit like a glove.”
The Jaguar also got a new eight-speed, automatic transmission — the ‘76 model had originally been an automatic. Morse had a new burgundy paint job done, and installed new leather in the front seats.
“They were able to match the color of the (new) leather exactly to the color of the rest of the leather in there. So, unless somebody told you, you would never know that it had new leather on the front seats,” he said.
“To me, it’s a tribute to my dad. … And (like they say) everything has a price, and everything is buyable. That’s not.”