An outgrowth of Calcutta-based Mackinnon Mackenzie Company, Inchcape has operations in 32 countries across Asia, Australia, Europe, Africa and South America.

[6] In 1874, James Lyle MacKay joined Mackinnon and Mackenzie in Calcutta and by 1914 was the sole surviving senior partner in MMC.

Largely responsible for solving India's currency problems and for the adoption of the Gold Standard, he was given a peerage by King George V for his services to industry in 1911.

Dodwell & Company was founded in Shanghai in 1858, and by the 1970s had established extensive businesses in shipping, motors, and business-machine trading in Hong Kong, Japan and many other Far Eastern ports and cities.

This business stream kept on growing due to the acquisition of the Caleb Brett group, SEMKO and various others, such as ETL Testing Laboratories.

Difficult economic conditions in some of the company's key markets – particularly in Western Europe and Hong Kong – dampened consumer spending, while the strength of the yen made Inchcape's Japanese products, notably the Toyota motor vehicles, less attractive than those of competitors based outside Japan.

[6] A new management team determined that Inchcape had to focus on its core international distribution businesses to turn things around and began making significant business divestments, including selling the Bain Hogg insurance brokerage subsidiary (formed by the merger of Inchcape's brokerage operation with Bain Clarkson, and the Hogg Group in 1994 and ranked the eleventh largest broker in the world in 1995[11]) to the Aon Corporation in the United States for £160 million in 1996.

[12] In March 1998 spurred by the Asian economic crisis, Inchcape announced, that it would focus exclusively on worldwide car distribution, the most successful part of the group.

[17] In December 2022, Inchcape announced its £1.3 billion GBP acquisition of Latin America’s largest independent automotive distributor, Derco, had been approved by Chilean authorities.