$12,000,000 More

Since October, U.S. investors have plunked $53 million into Henry J. Kaiser's automaking enterprise. Last week they learned that they would soon be invited to plunk down $12 million more. The new money would not go directly into the Kaiser-Frazer Corp. It would be used to finance a new company to provide steel for K-F cars.

In the deal with Kaiser and Partner Joe Frazer was Cyrus Stephen Eaton, Cleveland financier who helped float the first two K-F stock issues. On May 23 the Portsmouth Steel Corp. was incorporated with Eaton as board chairman. Portsmouth plans to offer 1,025,000 shares of common stock to the public at $10 a share, as soon as its registration statement is made effective by the SEC, and sell another 300,000 shares at the same price to K-F and Graham-Paige Motors Corp. With the cash Portsmouth plans to buy the Wheeling Steel Corp.'s ingot works at Portsmouth, Ohio and the Emperor Coal Co. of Kentucky.

The new corporation has already contracted to turn about 40% of its capacity (50,000 tons a month) over to K-F. Under an agreement with Wheeling, the ingots will be rolled into body and fender sheets at its Steubenville plant, only 250 miles from Willow Run. The steel from Portsmouth will cost more than that from outside suppliers.

By the steel deal, Kaiser hopes to end one of his prime headaches. Once promised steel by U.S. and National Steel, he has had little delivered so far. Fortnight ago he was forced to start shipping steel to Willow Run from his own plant at Fontana, Calif., an expensive procedure. Now he plans to ship only enough from Fontana for 15,000 cars, expects to be getting steel from Portsmouth by the time these are finished. This should give him plenty of time to put the deal through.

Because of supplier strikes and production-line bugs, at week's end only five pilot cars had rolled off the Willow Run lines.

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