David Beckham is the latest star to drive a Jaguar in a new ad which looks just like a big-budget feature film.

The spot – which is currently only being broadcast on TV in China – was filmed in Majorca and the UK (Goodwood and London) and the pedigree really is quite something.

Goldeneye director Martin Campbell was at the helm for the Majorca tranche of the film, with fellow A-lister Matthew Vaughn heading up the UK side of the shoot. 

Producer Jules Fennell drew the whole thing together on behalf of (sole) production company Black Label Productions, working with creative agency Spark44.

The Knowledge had a chat with the lovely Marc Cass, the precision stunt driving double for Beckham, whose credits are pretty impressive to date: in Bond terms he has worked on Goldeneye, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day, as well as blockbusters including Star Wars, Terminator 3, Titanic and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone among others.

Cass gave us some fascinating snippets about the making of the film, not least of which was that the Houses of Parliament had to be shut down for filming to take place.

He also told us that the C-Type Jaguar in the film, the very first one Beckham is seen getting into, is worth around £6m.

This is topped, however, by the scorching £15m value of the D-Type, which was brought out of a museum for the occasion and which evoked in Cass a certain understandable trepidation: “When I asked the guys in charge of the car what would happen if I were to prang it, they said they would come after me with baseball bats…”

The film has the style of a really big-budget movie, and certainly there was little expense spared. For example, Cass explained that Beckham’s head had to be superimposed on his own to achieve the realism in the driving scenes – an extremely costly process.

We think this one deserves to be seen as widely as possible; it’s a gem from a truly British line-up of talent. Take a look here.

Many thanks to Marc Cass, Jules Fennell and Spark44 for their help in compiling this article.

Picture courtesy of Getty Images/Jason LaVeris.