I am looking for a free/low cost website building tool that a relative
site building novice can use that meets the following needs:

The site will be hosted with some low cost provider (TBD) with a new domain (TBD).

The site will be a catalog site that has no ordering capability.  It
will be used by an independent sales force to show product and
pricing.  Orders will be placed over the phone/fax.

I envision a homepage that gives and introduction.  The rest of the
site would be a product catalog with basic heirarchy (Category, Sub
Category (shows thumbnails of products), Product).

The product pages would show expanded images of various views of the
product along with product description, pricing, etc.

Thanks

Google Page Creator
http://pages.google.com/-/about.html

MonsterTemplates.com may be a good start for you.

Use the OpenSource  NVU

pls visit www.templatesbox.com ....