Watch Jean-Claude Van Damme perform the splits between two moving trucks (w/VIDEO)

Engaging truck ads are unsurprisingly rather thin on the ground, but in 2013 Volvo Trucks have been filling the content vacuum with a series of shareable (and informative) stunts culminating in the latest featuring Hollywood action hero, Jean-Claude Van Damme.

‘The Epic Split’ features Van Damme standing between two reversing Volvo FM trucks with a foot on each side mirror… The ad was designed to show the precision and directional stability of Volvo’s new Dynamic Steering system, which makes their trucks easier to drive.

As in the movies, Van Damme performs his own stunts, but was nevertheless surprised at how easy it was maintain the splits in such challenging circumstances.

“Before doing the split between the trucks, I saw the storyboard and thought it looked amazing. It’s very majestic and very powerful,” said 53-year old Van Damme.

Since taking up karate at age eleven, Van Damme has gone on to become an icon of martial arts and gymnastics in action films, starring in dozens of movies including Universal Soldier, Hard Target, Street Fighter, Timecop and The Expendables 2, where he stars alongside Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis.

Throughout his career, doing the splits has been Van Damme’s signature move, performed in countless action films, but this was the first time he (or anyone else) had performed them between two moving trucks.

“This film is the perfect demonstration of the directional stability Volvo Dynamic Steering can offer,” explains Jan-Inge Svensson, the engineer behind the development of the system’s software at Volvo Trucks.

“The stability and control are so good that you can reverse a truck over a long distance with very high precision, which is exactly what we’ve had to do in this film. It had to be perfect – right down to the last centimetre.”

‘The Epic Split’ follows on from Volvo Trucks’ previous viral hits which include; ‘The Chase’, ‘The Hamster Stunt’, ‘The Hook’ and ‘The Ballerina Stunt’ – if you haven’t already seen them then click on the links to watch them on YouTube – you won’t be disappointed.