It has taken me several days to be able to post something like this on BANGshift. Posting it the day we found out about the loss of our great friend would have been the smart thing for page views and likes and all the crap we unfortunately are measured on, but it just didn’t feel right. Hell, this weekend I spoke about Kyle at Holley’s LSFest Texas and couldn’t do it without getting choked up. Yesterday I spoke with Matt Frost and our conversation about Kyle featured several cracks of my voice and his. Kyle was a wonderful person that we are all lucky to have had in our lives, at whatever level you knew him.
Here’s what I posted up on Facebook a couple days after he left us.
By now it seems like the only thing anyone in our world is talking about is the loss of our dear friend Kyle Loftis. I met Kyle in 2005, about 2 minutes after arriving at KCIR for Drag Week and had never heard of him, 1320Video, or the blue truck that Jim Neuenfeldt owned and was setting the streets of Omaha on fire with. He recognized my car from the Hot Rod Magazine it was featured in that came out the day before, and we became fast friends, because I’ve never met a stranger and Kyle was an awesome human being. We would spend the next 21 years at races of all kinds, on the wall, on the side of the road, in gas stations, at rest stops, and also at the occasion historic site.
In 2005, 1320Video was just a hobby thing for Kyle and it would be years and years later before he’d give up his day job to do it full time. I started BANGshift in 2008, and Kyle and I often talked about how our businesses grew up together. We shared advice, laughed a lot, and cried some too.
He was there for many epic moments in our racing lives and I can’t thank him enough for the amazing images and video that he and his team created over the years. He captured so many wonderful moments with my late wife Daphne Reynolds, and the two of them had many laughs together.
In 2017, we found ourselves in the Neuro ICU in Kearney Nebraska because of brain swelling on the final day of Rocky Mountain Race Week. While we were in the hospital, with Daphne in extreme pain and me working on a plan to get her back home to her surgical team, we got word that the entire 1320Video crew was in the lobby of the hospital waiting for us. When they finally wheeled us out of the hospital, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house as Kyle handed Daphne a stuffed Snoopy they had picked up on the way. I’ll never forget that, or the photos and videos that he would share not long after she passed away in September.
Kyle was a wonderful human being and my heart aches with his loss. I am so sorry for Matt, Fred, Witty, and the entire crew. And I’m so sorry for his family outside of racing.
Right now I’m going to remember the last big hug I got from him and the genuine love and laughter that came along right after as we talked about my 2026 travel plans.
God Speed my friend. You will be missed and we love you.
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