Since Ford owns Aston Martin, it got me to thinking, Who actually makes the Aston Martin engines? Are they just modified, souped up Ford engines, or does Aston actually do the designing and building?
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe they are derivatives of Ford engines. For instance, the 6.0L V12 is essentially two 3.0L V6 blocks joined. I'm sure Aston Martin did the engineering necessary to make it work but it is derived from a Ford design. In a similar vein, the 3.0L V6 in my Mazda is based on the Duratec. The block is the same but the heads and intake are all Mazda designed and don't have any common parts with the Duratecs you find in Ford products.
Tom is correct, the Aston Martin V12 is based off the 3.0 Duratec. As he says the block is essentialy 2 Duratec blocks stacked on top of each other.
But Aston Marton does do their own develpment work. I belive that they are coming out with (or already have) a V8 engine that is somewhat based off the AJ-V8 (Jag & Lincoln LS).