The most common opening message we get from a new dealer is some version of what sells well from China?
It is a reasonable question and it is the wrong one to start with, because in most of the markets we serve the answer has already been decided by something the dealer cannot negotiate with. Import policy narrows the field first. Buyer preference operates inside whatever is left.
Dealers who work out the constraint first waste far less time than dealers who fall in love with a segment and then discover it lands at an impossible number.
Policy shows up in four shapes
Across very different markets, the rules that reshape sourcing tend to reduce to four patterns.
Duty structured to favour one powertrain. Several markets have written a deliberate advantage for electric vehicles into their tariff schedules, in some cases dramatic enough that an EV lands at a lower total cost than a cheaper petrol car. Where that exists, it is not a preference — it is the entire commercial case, and a dealer sourcing petrol into such a market is fighting their own customs schedule.
Vehicle age limits. Many markets cap how old an imported vehicle may be. This is the constraint that quietly kills the most deals, because the sweet spot of cheap used supply usually sits just outside it. A dealer working under a tight age cap is shopping a fundamentally different pool than one who is not, and the two should not be compared on price.
Value or engine-capacity bands. Where duty scales steeply with declared value or displacement, the landed-cost curve develops cliffs. A modest step up in specification can cross a band and add far more to the final number than the specification was worth. Knowing where your cliffs sit is worth more than any discount a supplier can offer.
Drive-side and homologation requirements. Left- or right-hand drive is the obvious one. Beyond it sit lighting standards, emissions certification and registration paperwork that vary by market and are rarely visible until the car is already there.
What that produces in practice
Play those four patterns across real markets and the field collapses into a handful of distinct lanes.
The electric lane. Where policy strongly favours EVs, sourcing becomes narrow and specific rather than broad. The commercial logic is genuinely strong here — the pool of three-to-five-year-old Chinese electric vehicles exists at a scale and price no other source market can match, because Chinese buyers moved to electric early and in enormous numbers. The discipline this lane demands is battery condition rather than mileage, which is a different skill from ordinary used trading.
The near-new lane. Where an age cap is tight, the question stops being which model and becomes which recent model is available in volume at a price that still leaves margin. Supply is thinner, competition among importers is higher, and speed matters more than in any other lane, because eligible units age out of eligibility while you deliberate.
The high-value lane. In markets where duty is heavy regardless of what you bring, cheap cars stop making sense. Fixed costs — freight, clearance, handling — do not shrink with the value of the car, so they consume the entire margin on a low-value unit. Counter-intuitively, the correct response to a punishing tariff is usually to import fewer and more expensive vehicles, not more and cheaper ones.
The open lane. Some markets impose no unusual constraint, and here ordinary commercial judgement applies — buyer preference, parts availability, brand recognition, resale speed. This is the only lane where what sells well? is the right first question.
Most dealers are in one lane and think they are shopping all four.
The mistake this framing prevents
The expensive version of getting this wrong is not picking a slow-selling car. It is building a business case on a landed cost that policy will not permit.
We see it most often as a dealer who has priced a unit against what a competitor is retailing locally, without accounting for the fact that the competitor’s car entered under a different classification, a different model year band, or before a rule changed. The retail price is real. The path that car took to get there is not available any more.
Confirm the rule for your specific vehicle category and model year before you commit to a unit. Not the general rule — the rule as your customs post is applying it this quarter.
What we do not know better than you
Duty rates, valuation methods, age caps, homologation requirements and how your border post is currently interpreting them. Your broker knows these and we do not. They also change, sometimes faster than any published guide reflects.
We are not being coy. We would rather be useful about the part we genuinely control than confident about the part we do not, and this industry has no shortage of exporters happy to quote you a duty figure they read somewhere.
What we control is our side: the unit is what the report says it is, and the number we quote is the number you pay.
How we quote
EXW China plus China-side handling and loading, plus freight to your agreed handover point — one written number, fixed at booking. Duties and clearing stay with your broker.
Before you commit to a unit you get its inspection report, full photo set and mileage record. If a car has repair history, that history is in the report.
Dealers anywhere in our markets: tell us the constraint you are working under — the age cap, the powertrain advantage, the duty band you are trying to stay under — and the price band that works on your lot. We will send three units that fit inside it, with photos and EXW pricing each. That is a far more productive conversation than a catalogue.