There’s no CGI in this ad. That’s the entire point of it, and it’s also why it worked. Volvo Trucks needed a way to demonstrate Dynamic Steering, a new stability system, without putting out another spec sheet nobody would read.
Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors had already built five Live Test films for Volvo Trucks — stunts involving tightrope walkers and hamster wheels — but the sixth needed to top all of them. During early interviews, an engineer mentioned reversing a truck and trailer at high speed and being amazed by how stable it felt. That offhand comment became the seed of the entire concept.
Jean-Claude Van Damme, then 53, stood with one foot on each side mirror of two Volvo FM trucks as they drove backward in a straight line, slowly separating. As the gap widened, he lowered himself into a full split between them, narrating the whole thing himself: a short reflection on the ups and downs of his career, timed perfectly to end as his legs reached full extension.
Director Andreas Nilsson shot the whole thing in a single unedited take at a disused airstrip in Ciudad Real, Spain, timed to a narrow sunrise window to get the light right. It took three days of rehearsal before Van Damme performed the actual stunt, secured by a harness hidden just out of frame.
It passed 100 million views within a week and is still cited as one of the clearest examples of B2B advertising ever made — a truck company convincing millions of people who will never buy a truck to watch, share, and remember exactly what Dynamic Steering does.