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I'm sure there are lots of opinions on this, but I'll provide two data points. When I was installing the 3.6 in my car, I upgraded the front cooler at the same time. My car was plumbed with AN12 when I had an RX-7 oil cooler up front, and it never cooled my 2.7 all that well. For the 3.6, I knew the cooler wouldn't do the job, so I ordered a B&B 9400(?) cooler, which was much larger. I debated long and hard whether to go through the trouble and cost to change the lines to AN16, and I got a couple of opinions.
Data point 1
My mechanic is/was a very skilled driver and raced a 930 back in the day. He had AN12 plumbed to the front and everyone warned him that it was too small, and he needed to go to AN16. He decided to go through the pain and switched it out to AN16, and claims to have noticed absolutely no difference in performance or oil temperature as a result. He didn't feel it was necessary for me to change to AN16.
Data point 2
I decided to order the cooler with AN16 fittings, but bought AN16 to AN12 adapters so I could run the car with the existing lines, but would have the ability to switch to bigger lines without having a bottleneck of AN12 fittings on the cooler. The plan was to run the car for a few events, and make a decision from there. I did just that, and never had any cooling issues, so I didn't bother changing to AN16. I also had a front pan cooler duct installed, so I had a high level of efficiency from the cooler from all that wonderful air passing over it. In my case, I was OK with AN12.
All that being said, if I was doing it from the start, I would run AN16 so I would never have to worry about it. As for reworking existing plumbing or using larger hose for a cooler with a bottleneck of a smaller diameter, I'm not sure what to tell you. For reference, click the absolutely ancient thread in my signature, and hopefully it's not dead.
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