Despite steering wheels, grills, and various other Ford components making it into several turn-of-the-millennium Astons, a pair of hastily combined Ford V6 engines certainly did not. The powerful V12 Aston Martin relied on a brand new, specially cast engine block with specialist cylinder heads along with purpose-built internals like the camshafts and crankshaft. Even some of the materials used, such as the aluminum the heads were cast from, were of a higher grade than Ford used on the Duratec V6.
The AM V12 was a high-performance engine designed to go under the hood of Aston Martins. There are things high-performance engines go through that regular motors just aren’t capable of. For example, Aston’s V12 has around 200 more horsepower than the Duratec V6, though admittedly the six extra cylinders really help there. In addition, the combustion chambers had a notably higher compression ratio than the Duratec’s, as well as tumble port intakes.
With that being said, there was certainly plenty of design inspiration provided by the Duratec, and some components did actually make it across. So while it’s very unfair to insinuate that the AM V12 is what you get when you cross a team of lazy designers with a pair of Ford V6s and a bucket of epoxy — there are still some solid links that must be acknowledged.
