Raffi Minasian
Design & Development Director  

Raffi has taught design and product development at several notable universities and design colleges and has been featured on television programs “World of Wheels”, “Speed Vision Network”, TLC “Rides”, and the “Fine Living Network”. Raffi has designed more than 300 different model cars, several full-sized cars, consumer products, toys, and home accessories. Raffi has been awarded the “Award of Excellence” from Car Styling magazine and recently was part of the design/build team for the 2005 AMBR – 32 Ford Hot Rod “Sedeuced”.

Raffi has devoted much of his professional energy to educational programs for young people interested in design professions. He is an advisory board member for public school programs, Professor at California College of the Arts and San Jose State University, and Board of Director member for the Collectors Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to serving youth involved in the automotive community through scholarships, grants, and museum support. Recently Raffi was awarded the "Educators Who Make A Difference" award by the Yuba County Office of Education for his efforts supporting the Automotive Academy.

Raffi lives in Walnut Creek, California with his wife and two daughters where he maintains his design consultancy.

Matt Boyd
Editorial Development

Matt is the cofounder and former editor of DieCast X Magazine. He now works as a freelance journalist and has written extensively on collectible scale modeling, design and industry trends, and reviewed literally hundreds of models for every major brand in the diecast industry. In addition, he has published a number of articles on full-scale motorsports, automotive history and a handful of other non-automotive genres.

Not surprisingly, Matt is a lifelong automotive enthusiast and diecast collector. An eclectic fleet of family transportation ranging from a Volkswagen Microbus to a ‘70 Dodge Challenger to a Porsche 914 2.0L—among numerous others—gave him an early appreciation for automotive diversity. Matt exercised that appreciation by cultivating his own fleet in scale—first with 1:64 Hot Wheels and Matchbox diecast, then graduating to plastic kits of every shape and description, and then finally to diecast in a variety of larger scales—the only prerequisites being four wheels and charisma. That collection has been growing for more than 30 years and Matt merged his love for scale models with an education in journalism when he helped launch DieCast X.

Matt currently lives in Danbury Connecticut, and when not adding to his collection he can often be found hurtling his Volkswagen GTI through the cones at his local autocross club or camped out on the hillsides overlooking the historic road race course at Lime Rock Park with camera at the ready.

Christopher Keller
Design & Development

Christopher Keller has spent most of his life fascinated with creating digital imagery and virtual objects. His nearly 30 years of experience with computers, programming, CAD, digital image creation and manipulation has culminated in a design career developing high end, high quality, digital surfacing for product and automotive applications.

Christopher has worked with world class design teams around the world bringing award winning products to market including items like the Celestron Skyscout (featured in Wired Mar 2006) and flowtoys, inc. He was recently published in Forza magazine, iVT magazine (industrial Vehicle Technology) for the John Deere Skid Steer Loader and his products have also been featured in Esquire, Maximum PC, and other publications.

Christopher maintains his professional practice in the metro Chicago area but is virtually linked to development partners around the globe.

Herb Grasse
Technical Advisor | Bricklin

Herb Grasse has been in the Automotive Design field since 1966. A graduate of the prestigious Art Center College Of Design. He has created designs for a diverse section of the automotive industry. His talents have been used by George Barris, The United States Military, movie studios, Ford Motor Company, Chrysler Corporation, American Motors, Mazda, Nissan, and best known for the design of the Bricklin SV1. Herb is still active and designing vehicles at the age of sixty five and does not plan on putting his brushes, pencils and sweeps down for some time to come.

Mike Mooney
Technical Advisor | Griffith

Early in 1964 Mike Mooney was looking around the car market to find his first high performance car. Fresh out of his four year stint in the United States Marine Corps he had been bitten by the muscle car bug but his 1962 85-horsepower Ford Falcon just didn't work for him. When he spotted a note on the bulletin board at the Suffolk County Police Department Fourth Precinct wall proclaiming that he could buy any ordered car from the Griffith Ford dealership he jumped at the offer.

His first choice was the recently introduced 1964 Falcon Sprint with the 260 CID engine but there was word of a new and improved sporty car on the horizon. Hanging around the dealership he finally wrote the order for a 289 Cobra-engined HiPo Mustang.

That was the start of a new relationship in fast cars. While he watched the cars come in and go out of the showroom awaiting the 271 hp HiPo, he noted not only the Cobras on the floor but also a small car being stored out in the shop, the newly introduced Griffith.

As Mike had moved from precinct patrol in the Highway Patrol, he drove a 1964 "Police Special" Mercury on the Long Island Expressway where, one day, he found a disabled Griffith parked on the shoulder. Idling up to the driver’s window Mike immediately recognized Mark Donohue who sadly told Mike that he had run out of gasoline. Mark was Jack Griffith's VP and chief engineer at Griffith Motors.

This incident caused Mark to learn of Mike's "need for speed" and the possibility of having Mike become the factory test driver for each car that rolled off the Griffith assembly line. That friendship was forged into a two year unpaid job of making sure that each car would be set up for delivery to the customer. Of course, the "factory test track" just happened to be the Long Island Expressway, 12 miles of which were perfect to wring out the evils of the Griffith.

This fact was kept well under the radar for many years. When Griffith eventually closed its doors, Mike moved on to several other interesting positions within the department, motorcycle, boat captain, airplane pilot, television director and communications dispatcher, finally retiring from the department in 1986.

After a few positions in driving various big vehicles around the country, including the Glenn Miller Orchestra tour bus, Mike found the time right for a new direction. In 1991, with either none or little truth being written about the Griffith, Mike set on interviewing as many of the original factory workers in order to collect the history of the venerable British-American hybrid and in 2003 the book, "The Griffith Years" was published.

Since then Mike has made it his passion to collect as much of the history and the untold stories of this little muscle car as well as assembling a registry of as many of the owners of these cars as possible.

Fast forward and after nearly twenty years of research, Mike is tilting on the reproduction of the Griffith motorcar keeping the classic cosmetics of the car in the design but bringing the engineering into the 21st century. The Griffith G2 is a faithful continuation of the original car but is being built to the safety standards of today.  

Marshall Moore
Design and Development | TVR

Marshall Moore is the President of the TVR Car Club North America and has been involved with the TVR marque since 1976. Since that time, he has owned seven different TVRs including three 2500Ms, one Taimar, and three 280i models.

Marshall holds a degree in Journalism and spent the first half of his working career as a broadcast journalist in both radio and television before moving into the public information field.

He joined the TVR Car Club of England in 1976 and became involved with the TVR Car Club North America in the mid 1980s, assuming the duties of President in January 2001. He also writes and edits the club’s quarterly magazine, the TVR Times. In addition to serving as President of the TVRCCNA, Marshall is also the North American Liaison for the TVR Car Club of England and writes a monthly column “News From Across the Pond as well as contributing other features for the club’s SPRINT magazine throughout the year. In 2007, he was asked to be one of four Concours judges at TVR’s 60th Anniversary celebration in England.

Over the years, Marshall has developed a reputation as a very knowledgeable TVR authority and has been a contributor on several TVR books, a thesis on TVR Marketing by a university student in England, and has been interviewed numerous times in recent years about TVR by various publications including the New York Times.

Marshall lives in Roanoke, Virginia with his wife and two step-daughters where he owns Classic Motor Works, the only classic TVR and Marcos parts vendor in the United States. He is also an avid diecast model car collector with over 100 1:18 scale cars, and, has begun growing 1:43 scale car collection too.