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The Bristol Engine Company was originally a separate entity, Cosmos Engineering, in turn formed from the pre- WW1 automobile company, Brazil-Straker. In 1917 Cosmos was asked to investigate air-cooled radial engines, producing the Bristol Mercury, a 14 cylinder two-row (helical) radial, which they launched in 1918. This engine saw little use, but a smaller and simpler 9 cylinder version known as the Bristol Jupiter was clearly a winning design. In the post-war rapid downsizing of military orders the company went bankrupt, and the Air Ministry let it be known that it would be a good idea if Bristol purchased them. The Jupiter competed with the Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar through the 1920s, but Bristol put more effort into their design, and by 1929, the Jupiter was clearly superior. In the 1930s they developed a new line of radials based on the sleeve valve principle, which would develop into some of the most powerful piston engines in the world, and could continue to be sold into the 1950s. In 1956 the division was renamed Bristol Aero Engines, and then merged with Armstrong Siddeley in 1958 to form Bristol Siddeley as a part of the airframe mergers that formed BAC. In 1966 Bristol SiddeleyBristol Siddeley was a UK aero-engine manufacturer formed in 1959 from the merger of Bristol Aero Engines and Armstrong-Siddeley. Its Filton factory in North Bristol produced many high performance military aero engines including the Olympus, from which th merged with Rolls-RoyceRolls-Royce is a set of several companies, all deriving from the British automobile and aero-engine manufacturing company founded by Henry Royce and C. Rolls in 1906. The companies are: Rolls-Royce plc by far the most significant in economic terms, is a B, leaving only one major aero-engine company in England, Rolls-Royce.

In 1946, with the surplus capacity after WW2, the company started an offshoot, Bristol CarsBristol Cars is a manufacturer of hand-built luxury cars, based at Filton, near Bristol, England. Bristol Cars has no distributors nor dealers and deals directly with customers; they have a showroom in Kensington in London. They claim to be the last wholl, using pre-war BMWcircle divided into four quadrants of alternating white and light blue colour. This is a stylised representation of an aircraft propeller. The colours of the logo are those of the flag of Bavaria. BMW AG, abbreviation of Bayerische Motoren Werke ( Bavaria designs as the basis for a new car, the Bristol 400 . The car company became independent in 1960Events January-February January 1 Independence of Cameroon January 9 Aswan High Dam construction begins in Egypt January 11 Chad declares its independence. January 14 Ralph Chubb, the gay poet and printer, dies at Fair Oak Cottage in Hampshire. January 23, around the same time as the consolidation the British aircraft industry, but is still based at the Filton site.