Yep.
Auto loans are based on FICO, usually an auto-enhanced version, and also past history specifically with car notes. It is a secured loan - meaning there is substantial collateral, the vehicle itself - and they know that if you default, they can take the car and sell it to get (most of) their money back. The balance after they sell it is collectable too, a fairly simple judgment for them to get. So all in all, they are less worried about an auto loan.
A credit card account is a free pass for the cardholder to spend Capital One's money, and Capital One wants to know with reasonable certainty that they will be paid back. This is usually a purely FICO related decision, since the "base" or "standard" FICO score they pull is built to tell them exactly what they want to know about an applicant - do they have experience handling credit cards, do they pay on time, and are they free of major past issues? Capital One, like all lenders, has an internal policy setting the number range they will consider, and what derogatory marks they will overlook. Capital One is generally fairly lenient, but the policy does have limits and not everyone can get approved. There is no security on this debt for Capital One - they can't repossess restauant meals or cell phone plans or groceries or any of the other 7 zillion things a person can pay for with the credit card. All they can do is close the account if the person misbehaves, and chase down the money. So it's higher risk for credit cards, and lenders are likewise stricter about those than about auto loans.
Secured credit cards may be an option for you - there are some, Capital One included, which only require partial deposits if your report is almost good enough for unsecured ones, just not quite - and some of them (Discover, and Bank of America, for example) will let the secured cards "graduate" into unsecured cards once they are used properly for a given period of time (1-2 years in most cases).
Congratulations on the new car, though!
