The Mix houses — the president's portfolio, at more than one biography's strength

c. 1900 – 1927, and the son's body works, 1920–1922

How they were missed: carried as colour in a single biography. The businesses & banks pass printed Melvin W. Mix's other Mishawaka houses — the National Veneer Products Company, the Fast Feed Drill & Tool Corporation, the Lyradion Manufacturing Company, and the Mishawaka Public Improvement Corporation — at the strength of the one Coachbuilt biography that lists them, and named the city directories and the Tribune as the settling sources.

National Veneer, in the press: the South Bend News-Times of 19 July 1919 records the Dodge interests paying a six-per-cent bonus on the half year's work to the employees of "the Dodge factory, the National Veneer Products company, and plant No. 4" — a thousand employees across the group, in the headline's count — and adds the sentence that fixes the portfolio in a contemporary voice: "These plants are all owned by the Dodge interests." National Veneer, maker of the Perfecto line of trunks on the biography's account, thus stands in the press of record as a going Mishawaka works in 1919, inside the Mix group, paying the group's bonus. The Mishawaka Public Improvement Corporation, owner-operator of the Hotel Mishawaka, stands in the hotels file's record and is pointed to, not retold. and the West End State Bank, among the concerns the senior Mix controlled — a statement carried here at the biography's own strength, as colour for the bank roster of 1921 printed above, in which both houses stand.

Fast Feed Drill and Lyradion:

Kenyon Mix, the president's son, organized and managed the Universal Body Corp., one of the dozens of firms that built aftermarket bodies for the Ford Model T, with its manufacturing plant in Mishawaka and its showroom and sales offices in New York — 1920 to 1922, on the Coachbuilt company account. Mishawaka's own directory confirms the plant from the city's side: the 1921 classified carries "Universal Body Corp, 211 E. Mishawaka Ave." under Automobile Body Manufacturers, the only firm under the heading. A Ford-body works, run by the Dodge president's son, standing in the city's own book in the middle of its two-year course, absent from the automobiles file's brass-era story and from the first business pass alike — the gap discipline's clean catch. Its course past 1922 was not traced; the automobiles file owns the city's car story and takes this house by cross-reference from here.

The car company, for a season: the president’s portfolio also carried the city’s one car maker — in 1912 Mix bought the American Simplex company (by then Amplex) and sold it to Adolph Kamm, who produced hand-built cars of the Amplex design; the account stands whole in the Automobiles section.

Sources:

1. Coachbuilt, the Melvin W. Mix biography — the portfolio list (National Veneer Products Co. and its Perfecto trunks; Fast Feed Drill & Tool Corp.; Lyradion Mfg. Co., radios and phonographs; the Mishawaka Public Improvement Corporation and the Hotel Mishawaka), and the control of the Mishawaka Trust & Savings Co. and the West End State Bank.
2. South Bend News-Times, 19 July 1919 (Hoosier State Chronicles) — the six-per-cent bonus to the employees of the Dodge factory, the National Veneer Products company, and plant No. 4; "These plants are all owned by the Dodge interests."
3. Coachbuilt, the Universal Body Corp. account — Kenyon Mix as organizer and manager; the Mishawaka manufacturing plant and New York showroom; 1920–1922.
4. Polk's Mishawaka City Directory (1921), classified directory, heading Automobile Body Mfrs — "Universal Body Corp, 211 E. Mishawaka," the heading's only firm; the owners-roster file of this build carries the same line.