The automobile industry has an important role in the Brazilian economy and, particularly due to their symbolic connotations, cars are valued consumer goods in this country. Car manufacturers, moreover, constantly seek to improve the advertising strategies of their brands and of their products. Departing from the assumption that automobile advertising campaigns employ heuristic mechanisms, namely appealing to the Heuristics of Availability, Anchoring and Representation, this work aims at identifying such resources and discussing their possible outcomes in the interpretation of seventeen automobile campaigns broadcast in Brazil between 2010 and 2014. This work highlights, in an analysis of the selected corpus, how such mechanisms articulate with the storyline of the advertisements ensuing a stronger bond between the message and its target audience. In conclusion, it is argued in favor of the conscious use of resources with heuristic appeal in order to broaden the impact of traditional automobile advertising. Advertisements that make use of strategies to promote some heuristic appeal put forward more opportunities for the target audience to engage in their storylines, once such appeals tend to increase the attention and the interest of the spectator beyond the product or the brand being promoted.