After Going to a Dealer and Buying my New Car I was Assured over and over that all the inquiers that would show up on my report would count as one and would not hurt me that bad! In the long run, because they would all be the same date, and would indicate car loan. That was a lie! As further looking into my reports showed the inquiries were to several banks and on the comments they stated anything from loans, but nothing to with car purchase, now for 2 years I'm stuck with too many inquiries. They made 7 inquiries and wound up doing the finance with the maker of the car at the dealer. So they shopped around for nothing and screwed up my credit for the next 2 years!
All the hard inquiries will show up on your credit reports when you're shopping for an auto loan, but the FICO credit-scoring model is supposed to be able to recognize that you're shopping for a loan and then only count them once. Why do you think all the inquiries are killing your scores? They account for a small part of your FICO scores (10%), so something else must be going on if your scores have majorly tanked.
