Henrik Fisker, the man responsible for designing the the most beautiful car on the road (Aston Martin V8 Vantage), talks design, inspiration, materials, light, shadow, size, proportion, and more in this detailed three part interview. Here’s part two and part three.

On the cost of beauty…
...a design that is beautiful – except for the manufacturing challenges – is no more expensive to make than an ugly design. There is no excuse, really, for doing an ugly design.
On inspiration…
But where do I get the idea for the design? Whenever I’m awake, I think about cars. It’s not really something that’s from 9 to 4, and it’s not even exclusive to the 5 days a week; it’s 7 days a week. It’s when I drive to work, I look at cars and I wonder, “why’d they do that? I would not have done it like that.” Whenever I watch television, I always watch what cars people are driving…everything, it’s always cars. I think my inspiration just comes out of looking at cars, looking at what type of people are in cars, looking at how light reflects on the cars, that’s how I get my ideas. And I always have more ideas than I have cars to do, so I don’t think there’s ever a danger of running out of ideas. It’s more the other way around; you don’t have enough opportunity to actually put your ideas out.

On perception and expectations…
One of the things I wanted to change – which is just a detail, really – is that I wanted to get away from having carpet on the doors. I felt it was really ridiculous to have carpet on the doors, just because a lot of people kick the door. I thought, “this is an Aston Martin, this is a high quality car, and the interior is like an expensive leather couch.” You don’t put a carpet patch on an expensive Italian leather couch at home because somebody might kick it. You clean it after, or you make sure they don’t kick it. So, there is no carpet on the doors of the DB9. This was an important thing to take out.
On bigger not being better…
But, I will also say that I think one of the dangers in this pursuit of perfect space is kind of like a house. The natural thing when you move between houses is you always want a bigger house – not for everybody, but I think for a lot of people. And I think we get to a point where you buy the next bigger house and you realize, “well, it’s not really that much better. It’s nice to have all this space, but it’s not really more cozy, it’s not more nice to be here, it takes a lot longer to clean up…” It doesn’t mean that it’s a better house just because it’s bigger. I think the interior space of a car is the same.
On people having a hard time understanding value until they actually see it…
The natural thing, for most people, is if you ask them “do you want a bigger car,” they’ll say, “Yeah, I’d like a bigger car, I’d like a bigger space.” Nobody’s gonna say, “Yeah, I can deal with a slightly narrower car, I can handle a bit less shoulder room.” But I think reality is that if you make a truly beautiful car that maybe has the compromise that it is slightly smaller inside, people will understand and accept that. People will buy that car, because they realize, “wow that really is more beautiful, I really do like it more, and I’m buying it because of that.”

Read the rest: Part one, part two, and part three.