The slogan might as well be “Nobody expands like Cannon Motor Company … Nobody!”

Cannon’s expansions in the past two years involved buying up Vicksburg’s Honda and Toyota dealerships, which the company plans to merge into a supersite along North Frontage Road by late 2016, CEO Michael Joe Cannon told Port City Kiwanis at their Thursday meeting.

“Our goal provided everything falls into place, we’d like to be in by the end of next year,” Cannon said. “That’s something we want to do.”

Previously, Cannon had said the merger would happen by 2015, but the project has stalled while waiting on construction of the road connecting North Frontage and Wisconsin Avenue.

“It’s coming. A lot of the funds have already been appropriated and they’ve got a time frame to spend that money,” Cannon said. “That should be really, really exciting there.”

In May 2014, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen authorized Mayor George Flaggs Jr. to sign an agreement on a 20-year, $1.31 million loan, setting the payment at $7,281.48 a month for work on the road, which will go from North Frontage Road east to Wisconsin Avenue across part of the old Battlefield Mall property.

But Cannon Motor’s expansion began long before snagging two Vicksburg dealerships. The company began with a single used car lot in Calhoun City that Cannon’s father ran until his death in 1986.

“It was a 12 by 12 building with one light bulb that you pulled. You would have to see it to believe it, but that’s where we started,” Cannon said.

At the time, Cannon was an assistant football coach at Ole Miss but left to take over the family business. Three years later, Cannon bought another lot, and then another in a wave of expansion that has continued since.

“I’ve been very, very blessed. We’ve got a lot of great folks working for us and it’s all about the people. If you run a business or manage folks, you know it’s all about the people. I don’t want it to sound like we’re bragging but I do want you to know our story. It is our story, every employee we have here,” Cannon said.

Cannon Motors purchased Vicksburg Toyota in 2013 and in December it bought what was Excel Honda.

“I told them when we addressed them initially that I didn’t know how many owners they had seen come and go but this was the last one they’d ever see. We’ve come here to stay,” Cannon said.

Cannon Toyota General Manager Billy Crozier said Cannon’s influence has been great on the local dealership.

“We worked for a group before that was pretty absent. You didn’t hear from them very often and they were here hardly ever. Now we work for a guy that we hear from continuously and see him quite often,” Crozier said.

With the new company, the dealership has gone though major improvements in pace and attitude, he said.

“We work at a different pace now from the guys who clean up the cars to the folks in service. We were more reactive before where we are more proactive now,” Crozier said.