Lounging in his $120,000 home one Sunday last spring, a tough-faced, balding Indiana builder named James Robert Price decided to get ready for the building boom of the 19603 in the fastest way possible. Though he is the boss of National Homes Corp., the world's biggest maker of prefabricated houses, Jim Price felt that not even National was big enough for what lay ahead. That week he walked into the company's Lafayette, Ind. executive offices, pointed to a map and said: "I want a plant here, here and here."
This week National announced that Jim Price had got his plants—nine of them in as many states—through a merger with seven other U.S. home suppliers. Seven of the nine plants are in areas where National formerly sold no houses; they put National's network of twelve factories within a 200-mile radius of almost every major market east of the Rockies. With his new acquisitions Price this year expects to boost National's sales to $100 million, its production to 45,000 units—4.3% of all single-family, nonfarm houses built in the U.S.
600 Variations. The key to National's success is Price's head-on approach to both his problems and those of the U.S. homeowner. A creative, hard-driving businessman, Price has transformed the prefab from a poor cousin into a respectable member of the housing family. To rid the prefab of the boxy, cheap look and boring sameness that once plagued it, he has hired top architects to give his houses style, turns out four basic models in 600 different variations ranging from a three-bedroom $7.900 home to a $150,000 custom-built one. Price also has another valuable asset: his brother George, National's president and a hardselling salesman who travels four business days out of five.
What has enabled Price to transform the prefab is intensive automation of his factories. IBM machines control quality and monitor shipments. Nailing machines pound nails into interior and exterior sections with a single bang, and machines automatically cut, sand and paint every section. Overhead cranes move parts down a long assembly line, hoist them onto one of Price's fleet of 476 trucks which take on a house every seven minutes.
Aluminum House. Price's most radical house to date is made of aluminum. Though he introduced it only seven months ago, the house, which has only a few parts made of wood or Masonite, accounts for 30% of all National's sales, and Price expects it to hit 70% by 1960. He hopes to make it even more attractive with a 1960 model that has an exterior of aluminum, including roof, doors, window frames and exterior trim. He paints his aluminum houses with the same shiny baked enamel used on automobiles. (it lasts three or four times longer than ordinary house paints), this year will use a flat, baked Lucite finish especially developed for him by Du Pont. Says he: "Our 1960 aluminum house is the greatest technical advance in housing in 100 years."
Price never forgets the housewife in planning his houses, has introduced countless innovations to save time, labor and space. In his 1960 line of all-aluminum French Regency houses, he has installed a "traffic-flo" bathroom with two entrances to cut down traffic jams.