At the current time, I was working for an Internet company who was releasing a "build it yourself" website program. In order to demonstrate to the customers how easy the program was to work with, I decided to build a website about my Trans Am. As I performed regular maintenance on my car, I would document the process and the next time I was demonstrating the web-program to the customer, I would upload the information about the work performed on my Trans Am. As I learned more information about production numbers and model changes, I would again, upload it to the website. It was about at this point in time, I decided to go out and register an official domain name for the website which I first picked www.hitmantransam.com. Since that name was a little too long to type in, I went out and registered www.78ta.com to make it easier to get to and type into the Internet browser.

That is how www.78ta.com got its start on the World-Wide-Web. We kept on adding more and more information about the Second Generation Trans Ams, and got deeper into the maintenance and care of the car. And overtime, we would do something new or learn something new, it went right up to the website. Once the site started to grow, so did the amount of visitors coming to the site every month. In 2000 it started at about 2,000 people a month who would visit the site for information. That climbed to 4,000 in 2001, 10,000 in 2002, and now in 2008 the website pulls in over 93,000 visitors and 3.2 million hits a month from places all over the World.

These statistics are not "hits" to the site, but actual Visitors who frequent these pages. Alot of other websites try to make it seem like they get more than they do. Sure, I get over 3,200,000 (yes that Million) Hits every month which is what most webmasters tell you, but my Stats are based on actual Visitors, and not hits. Please click here for an explanation: Hits vs. Visitors

During the growth of 78ta.com, I also started to refinish alot of the parts myself that were not available for sale out there in the market. Things such as snowflake rims, grilles, emblems, T-tops, and more. In restoring alot of these parts, the "Hitman's Trans Am"

website started to get noticed by more and more people out there. Visitors started coming to me asking to use some of the photos of my car. A gentleman by the name of Mark Cranswick approached me and asked if he could use some photos of mine in an upcoming book titled "Pontiac Firebird The Auto Biography". I sent along some photos and about 8 months later, I got an e-mail from Mark stating that the book was being published in early 2003. So, my Trans Am was not only known worldwide via the Internet, but now it was known internationally through print media. A photo of my Trans

Am is located on Page 73. You can read more about the book here: Pontiac Firebird.

Now, there are quite a few other things that I have done out there in the Media. Not only has my car been out there on the Internet and in Books, but it is also starting to make appearances on different shows and other forms of media. My Trans Am was also be on an episode of "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations" on August 27th, 2007. Click Here for more on that subject. 78ta.com has also afforded the opportunity to rub elbows with other car enthusiasts like Dennis Gauge from "My Classic Car"..

So, now I was getting more recognition out there than just the traditional Internet traffic. Not only did I have the huge amount of traffic flowing through my website each and every month, I would also receive alot of emails with questions and requests for more information. Every now and then I would ask the people who visited my website how they found out about my website. I would get the normal Search Engines like AOL, Netscape, MSN, and Yahoo where they found my site, but a few people told me that Pontiac themselves referred them to my website. I was quite surprised and taken back by this to see that the Pontiac Customer Assistance Center was actually sending people to me for questions that could not be answered by Pontiac themselves! They forwarded along the e-mail that they received from Pontiac and sure enough, my website was listed there above such other companies as Year One. You can read a few of the letters here: Pontiac Letters. I also have been making improvements to the site and made it more interactive with the addition of the Pontiac Trans Am Forum in November of 2005. That has really worked out well and the Forum now has over 1,100 members. If you haven't had a chance to check it out and register, Click Here, I highly recommend it.

After speaking with a friend of mine, he had mentioned "Hey, you restore all of these parts for the Trans, why not restore the whole car?". I thought to myself, "Sure, .... Why not". I left the computer and Internet company that I was working for and started my own business called Trans Am Specialties, LLC which specialized in the restoration and preservation of the Second Generation Pontiac Trans Am. Because of the amount of traffic that was visiting my website each and every month and the reputation that I had with the information listed on 78ta.com, right from the start of opening my doors, I had cars lined up for restoration. Over the next four years, I purchased, restored, and sold close to 80 Second Generation Trans Ams.