Remember When 2 El Paso, Texas News Vans Raced Against Each Other

Yes El Paso, Texas loves to brag about having the speediest & fastest news coverage in the area. Well it turns out...two local stations decided to put their money where their mouths were and prove it...they took their official news vans & put them to the test with a drag race.

This is the story of the El Paso news van drag race

Let's meet our contenders: the KDBC Channel 4 news van,

and the KVIA Channel 7 news van,

Both are equally heavy with presumably THOUSANDS of dollars worth of news equipment inside and on top of the van. So both are pretty equally matched. But which one will win?

Well...let's watch the video and find out.

It's a little hard to tell from behind but judging by this shot of both vans, we can see that indeed the KDBC van just edged out KVIA's fan, meaning...

That the driver of the KDBC van is the winner! Or should I say...unlucky winner?

Yes this video got out & got some national exposure on CNN after the video surfaced online. It made it worse because the night before, someone was actually killed in a drag race on public roads...

So who drove the KDBC & KVIA news vans in this drag race?

Well... we do know that Charlie Bernal drove the KDBC van; he even commented on the video of the race saying "This is Charlie Bernal here. I was the driver of the KDBC unit that night. I'm glad everyone enjoyed that one. I'm still laughing my ass off to this day about it. BUT, unfortunately I was canned today from KDBC because of this. No matter though, I payed for what I did :p Definitely a night to remember".

The driver of the KVIA van was Richie Zamora & his passenger, Rick Cabera, were disciplined by their general managers, but were not fired. In an El Paso Times article on March 13, 2008, Rick was quoted saying:

"Did we make a mistake? Definitely. Do I wish I could take it back? Certainly. Unfortunately, I can't. But I do want my fellow co-workers and my bosses to know I'm sorry and I wish they didn't have to deal with the backlash resulting from my poor judgement". Rick would stay with KVIA until 2018.

Listen I'm just glad that this happened on a sanctioned race track (the El Paso Motorplex Drag Strip) & not the public streets of El Paso. And the most important part, no one was hurt or killed. Perhaps though... we need our own KLAQ dragster & race THAT. Hmm....

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