With the 20 year anniversary arriving soon of that horrible day I just wanted to share a story involving a rental Camaro.
For our annual vacation we flew from our Tampa FL home to California to enjoy Hwy 1 and it's coastal towns. We owned a 1996 Formula and knew we were moving to NC soon and wondered what an F-body convertible would be like (we eventually bought our 2001 Trans Am 'vert).
The only rental they had at the airport in San Francisco was a 2001 Camaro convertible with a 6 cylinder. That was fine and we enjoyed it immensely along our two week travels along the coast. When we woke up in Pacific Grove CA on 9/11 we saw the news at our B&B and told ourselves we were NOT going home on any planes the next day when we were scheduled to leave. Most flights were cancelled anyway so we called our rental company to ask what to do and how much the fee would be to drive the Camaro back to FL 3,000 miles away. I had to be back to work and couldn't stay out west indefinitely. They waived the destination fee and off we went in our Camaro on a 3,000 mile cross country journey. The Camaro was an excellent highway car and we really liked it. It didn't have our Formula's performance obviously but it was 'peppy' and it was going to be a 'no-brainer' to buy that new Trans Am 'vert to enjoy in the NC mountains.
When we arrived back home in FL 5 days later, averaging about 600 miles per day, it was very difficult to drop the car off at the Tampa airport. With 2,000 miles of CA travel plus the 3,000 miles to get back home, we really bonded with this Camaro and it was difficult to say goodbye at the Tampa airport. We had our Formula though and bought the Trans Am in Charlotte when we moved to NC in 2002.
Here are two photos of our Camaro convertible out in CA. If you are wondering why there are stickers on the back bumper, we always try to disguise our rental cars a bit to make thieves think twice about whether we were locals or tourists with valuables in the trunk. We remove the rental stickers too. No idea if it works but we had no issues on this trip. The stickers are easy to remove after the rental period and I'm sure the rental company can replace their own.

 

Our first night heading home was in Reno, NV. it was like a ghost town. Look at this sheet that they prepared for guests. I'm glad my wife saves these things. They are actually a small part of history.

 

Interesting story, thanks for sharing. A '94 Z28 M6 'vert preceded the purchase of my '98 WS6. I was the first to title it. The story I was told by its previous owner (who owned a Corvette-centric used car company) is that it was originally a GM exec car that was later sold to him at auction when it had ~ 5000 miles on it. He lived on Clear Lake (near Freemont, IN) and his neighbor owned the only marina on the lake. They decided to swap the use of the Z28 for a Ski-Nautique, the marina owner's wife drove the Z28 until it had ~17,000 miles on it. At that point, he parked it in his tent in the car corral (along w/ numerous 'vettes he was selling) at the '97 ACD auction in Auburn, IN, where I spotted it. I was good friends with his nephew, so I arranged to go see it and test drive it after the auction. I had been looking for a M6 'vert F-bod for some time at this point, and spotting this car was like a miracle. It was polo-green with tan cloth interior and black top, a 1 of 37 combo I later discovered (more rare than my WS6!). I was really happy with that Z28, until I spotted a new '98 Firebird sitting out front of the local Pontiac dealership about a month later. Then in Feb '98 when I saw the first "Hungry" TV commercial for the '98 WS6s, my quest to replace the Z28 began. Coincidentally, it was Labor Day weekend (when the annual ACD auctions were held) in '98 when I spotted my WS6 in the classifieds. So it was just a few days less than 1 year that I owned that Z28.