Topic: W72/WS6 registry on TAC

[79 400 SE]

ta78ta. To date the last one known built is mine. Its a Pontiac Motor Division owned 79 Y84 W72 car, it was built on 5/29/79(05E) and sold in cincinnati,ohio in late 9/79. The john deloren car was proven not to be the last built due to its production being on 5/08 in californa. The second from last know is a 79 Y84 W72 as well that is optioned exact the same as mine being built on 5/21/79.

Hey 79W72SE, I've read things about your car on this & other forums but haven't heard anything in regards to the second from last car you mentioned. Do you know anything about it or if it still exists? I've always been interested in the 79 Y84 W72's and I also find the last W72 issue interesting. Mine is a later build car also.

[79W72SE]

79 400 SE, I can not verify weather or not the one I know of is the second from last built but its the second from last build date I have seen besides mine(5/29/79). It is a 1979 Y84 W72 that was built on 5/21/79(05d) in norwood,ohio and charged to PMD when new and latter sold in Williamsville,NY. The car had 17 opts and was a black on black car also this car is exactley optioned as mine. From what I heard from John Witze(W72 historian) that there were 60 last W72's built that were charged to Pontiac Motor Division(exec cars) when new. I myself was was shocked when I seen this car expecisley because it was charged to PMD and the same opts as mine so maybe this theroy of the last W72's does exist. The only thing i think more unique about mine vs this one is that mine was sold just a few miles from where(Norwood) it was built,charged to, sold and still lives all in the same area and not to mention its orginal owner will be coming to the nats this year to see it  79 400 SE do you have a documnted Y84 W72 car ? Also this one I talk about is on the website MuscleCarAlley(under cars forsale) maybe I'll see ya at the nats and glad to see some one else take a intrest in these Last W72 cars 

[79 400 SE]

Well my car makes it a set of triplets as it is optioned exactly the same as yours and the other car. I'm guessing that Pontiac offered some type of option package that included everything that our cars have.

I thought you might have been referring to my car originally so you may find the following interesting.
For a few short months, starting in August or September of 2006 my car was the "Last Known Built W72". It was built about 400 units after the one on MuscleCarAlley and about 1800 units before your car. In November of 2006 I found a regular Silver W72 Trans Am on e-bay that was built about 460 units before your car. Then in January of 2007 I noticed the VIN for your car on the Bandit TA club website and sent an e-mail to Witzke about it. So my car went from being the "Last Known W72" to the "Last Known Y84 W72" to being simply the 3rd from last known. I also found another W72 car that was built about 290 units before mine. It is also a regular Silver TA. So of the five I have info on yours is currently the "last known built" and the one on Muscle Car Alley would be the fifth from last known (to me at least) and my car would be in the middle. 3 of the five are Y84 SE's and the other two are both regular silver TA's with black hobnail interiors. These are all Norwood cars. I don't have much on the Van Nuys "Last W72" cars other than info from John Witzke says the last currently know from that plant is in the VIN range of 182??? but as you have mentioned in other posts has an earlier build date of somewhere around 5/8/79. I have yet to see a Van Nuys W72 with a higher VIN. I'm guessing others in these VIN ranges will show up as time goes on and who knows what went to the junkyards and will never be known about. My car was built on either 5/21 or 22/79. Unfortunately I haven't been able to locate a build sheet in my car. I think mice may have made a meal or nest out of it. I also haven't been able to dig up much in regards to the history of my car.

Hopefully your car actually is the last W72 car built as you know and can document all of the past history and owners from the time it was purchased. One thing I did notice is that my car wasn't shipped from Pontiac until 6/23/79 for some strange reason so I guess my cars only claim to fame might be the "Last Known Shipped W72 Car" until something comes along to change that also.

Sorry for the long post but I thought others may find this of interest.

[79W72SE]

79 400 SE, were the 2 silver ones you mentioned and yours all charged to PMD also mine was shipped out on 6/14/79 so yours is so far the last documented shipped from Norwood also when was yours sold new ? And even if we find one built latter than mine we'll just call mine the cincinnati edition 

[79 400 SE]

I only have PHS doc's on my car and the silver one built before mine. Neither one say anything about being charged to PMD. Mine was delivered to Cochrane Pontiac Inc. in Monroeville, PA and I have no idea as to when or to whom it was actually sold. I'm in the process of trying to dig up some historical data on it. The silver TA built before mine was sent to Piehler Pontiac Corp., in Rochester, NY. The only thing I have on the silver car built right before yours is a picture of the data tag on the cowl. I sent a few e-mails to the seller/owner and he said the following as to the original owner "This car was sold by Pontiac Motor Division, (to) GMC/J.R. Hiscock (an executive)." That's about all I know on those cars.

I'm going to contact PHS and make sure there wasn't any mistake made on the doc's I got from them. I would hate to think it may be the last one shipped just to find out later that it was actually shipped on 5/23/79. That would tick me off a little.

One other strange thing I noticed on my car is an"autograph" on the bottom side of the front spoiler. It has the last two digits off my vin, a date and some type of initials. What doesn't make much sense is that it has a date of 4/20/79 which is a month before the build date of my car. I supose someone could have added it at any point before I had the car but I don't know why they would or why in that spot and that date. I'm going to try & add apicture of it if I can figure that part of it out.


[attachment deleted by admin over 90 Days old]

[79 400 SE]

Getting back to the original topic, I love the idea of a registry. Am I mistaken but didn't some years interiors/seats include Standard and Deluxe(Vinyl) and cloth choices?

Another thought, would it be possible to add a "Current Owner" or "Previous Owner" checkbox and have a checkbox such as "OK to Contact"? Then if a current owner was looking for history on a car an e-mail could be sent to the previous owner with info as to how to contact the current owner. I know this may be getting away from the original intent and may not be possible due to the increase in data base size but I know I could provide info on at least 3 different cars I owned about 14 years ago, if they still exist. It could be a great tool for people that want to document a cars history. Maybe there could be a small fee involved to help cover the costs of the database?

Just a few thoughts, I really hope this registry becomes a reality.

[Hitman]

Well, the Registry will be a reality...... just might be closer to the end of this year, but it will become true.  As far as the choices for the seats, it was Standard Vinyl, Deluxe Vinyl, or Deluxe Cloth.  With the "Current Owner" - "Previous Owner" thing, I think that the current car owned would be the way to input it. I think with the registry, one of the reasons for it (or maybe I am wrong) is to find out how many of these cars are left on the road today.  So, if you input a car you owner 14 years ago, that car may be long gone and not on the road anymore so I do not think it should be part of the registry.  Maybe somehwere in the notes or something like that we can have something for old cars, but it would not be part or the main record for searches.  But it is really up to you guys.

[jphillips3333]

My Y84 SE ... I call it the Christmas edition (12B).  Maybe I should check out this TAC list ...

[79W72SE]

Hitman I agree with you as well I belive that we should only have cars in the registry that are on the road today, not cars that existed 22 years ago that were on the road to extinction even then 

[79 400 SE]

You guys are right. I didn't think it through but you could end up with a bunch of info that really doesn't matter to anyone because the cars are long gone. I was looking for a way to help people that are looking for historical info on their cars. I have 2 cars that I have tried to put together their history and ran into dead-ends on both. I think that past history is important to some people and not to others. What about adding a "Lost, Found or Looking" type section to the forums that would allow people to post as to cars they are looking for or have information on? Any thoughts on something like that? I know there is a "Lost Car Registry" but I was thinking of something more specific to TA's.

Another thing I noticed in the proposed registration form is the L78 400 and W72 400 engine choices but if I'm not mistaken they used the L78 designation for the 79 W72's. I think most people know that they are all W72's in 79 but I wonder if there is a possibility of misreporting because their PHS says L78. Just a thought and I'm not sure how it could be changed to avoid that possibilty.

I also wanted to clarify that in an earlier post in this thread I made mention of needing to confirm the ship date of my car with PHS. I stated that because I thought the PHS doc was a generic form that PHS entered the info on to. From reading other posts I see that the PHS doc is an actual copy of the original document that was generated by Pontiac, therefore there would be no mistake and the ship date of my car was 6/23/79.

I'm new to this site and typically I just read the posts but I have made a few posts on other forums but I really like this one.  There seems to be a great group of people here.

[Hitman]

What about adding a "Lost, Found or Looking" type section to the forums that would allow people to post as to cars they are looking for or have information on? Any thoughts on something like that? I know there is a "Lost Car Registry" but I was thinking of something more specific to TA's.

Yes, that could be something that is done, but maybe on a separate database structure.  So, we could have a "Current Registry" and a "Past Registry".

Another thing I noticed in the proposed registration form is the L78 400 and W72 400 engine choices but if I'm not mistaken they used the L78 designation for the 79 W72's. I think most people know that they are all W72's in 79 but I wonder if there is a possibility of misreporting because their PHS says L78. Just a thought and I'm not sure how it could be changed to avoid that possibilty.

Yes, the W72 was un upgrade to the L78.  So people who have the W72 also have L78 on thier build sheet.  For 1979 though it is easy because all L78's in 1979 were the W72 motors since they were all 4-speeds.  So, if someone puts in an L78 code for 1979, I can update it to reflect the W72.  Well, there is another way to do it, but it requires ALOT of programming and checks.  What I could do is make certain things available for certain years.  So, if they checked their year as 1979, then they could not select the L78, or they could not select Y82 since that was 1977 and 1978 only, or they couldn't select a buckskin interior since it was camel in 1979.... and so on, and so on.  So, that could also be done so that people don't put in the wrong values not know what the difference is.  But like I said, that requires a whole heck of alot of programming because of all of the choices and all of the years. Also, if tehy checked the "Modified" box, then all of those checks and balances would have to nullified because the car is not original anyway.  So, they could add a Pontiac 455 for a 1981 model year because the car is not stock. Basically what I will be doing is when people "register" thier cars, it does not get added to the atabase right away.  It willl actually come to me first so that I can check the information, then approve it to be added to the database.

This is why I want to get this discussion out in the open to get the full scope of the program and registry so that I can build it right the first time around.  There is nothing worse than trying to "add" something midstream and have to re-program it all.  So I will try and discuss everything here to get a good idea of what needs to be done from the start.

[79 400 SE]

As long as you are aware of the possible need to change any 79's that get registered as "L78's" it sounds like that's the best way to do it to avoid all of the additional programming work. I was just mentioning a possible issue but you were probably already aware of it.

In regards to the "Lost Car Registry" I was referring to another website that is set up for peolple to find their old cars. After giving it some thought, what I had in mind for here, rather than an actual registry, was a seperate section on the forums main page that people can go to post threads if they are looking for information on a car they own or for owners of a former car that have information that can be passed on or want to find again. It would be up to them to post in their thread as to how they can be contacted and they cold post something as simple as the general time and City that they had the car, maybe the last numerical part of the vin etc. As far as the section itself goes, I'm thinking something just like how "Aftermarket Information" is set up under "Trans Am Information"

I'm writing the following as an example of what I mean for possible threads as I don't think I'm explaining it very well:
Former owner in metro Denver area is available for contact in regards to a 1977 Trans Am that was bought in 1984 and sold in 1994. The car was white with white bucket seats at time of purchase and metalllic blue with blue velour seats when sold and had Hurst T-Tops. VIN number N186116. If a current owner is looking for historical info you can e-mail me at *****@aol.com.

Sorry if I'm not explaining this clearly but I don't know the "Forums" terminolgy very well.

[Hitman]

I am still working on the layout..... what other suggestyions do you guys have for "fields" of input for the cars?

http://www.78ta.com/registry.php

[Eagle 1]

How about an "other" under options, so you can type it in?

[TA78+99]

I would suggest under Options a selection for T-Tops - the selection could consist of None, Hurst or Fisher.