[Answer]-Can Django models have shortcut properties?

1👍

For a simple case, you would just do:

Manufacturer.objects.filter(company__name='Davies')

If you want to define a custom filter, it looks like the best way to do this is to set a custom manager on your model as described here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/db/managers/#custom-managers

I have not actually done this, but if you define a manager for your model, you should be able to do one of the following:

Override the filter method, then you should be able to modify kwargs as necessary to replace your aliases with your long ugly join
Define a new method like my_filter that applies the filtering you want