Actually, the wheels appear to spin backwards because they are making rotations at a rate that's different from the framerate of the camera that filmed it. Assume that the commercial was filmed at 24 frames per second. If the wheels on the car were spinning 24 times each second, they would appear to stand still, as every time the camera records a frame, the wheels would be in the same position they were in the last frame.
Make sense?
It's the same reason monitors flicker, but in the case of monitors, it's because the refresh rate is different from the frame rate, so you catch the monitor screen between refreshes.