GM’s Fastlane blog continues to be a poster child for how to engage a community in the blogosphere in support of business goals. It has, over the last few years, hit all the right notes. Now, it appears to be getting even better.

One thing Fastlane didn’t do was make an effort to respond to the various questions and issues that emerge in the comments. If principal author Bob Lutz, GM’s Vice Chairman and top car guy, responded to comments, it was primarily as a follow-up post, and only to themes that emerged from multiple comments.

Now, Lutz is responding to comments—not in the comment threads themselves, but in short video clips. He announced the introduction of the videos in a recent post, and Global Communications Technology Director Christopher Barger posted he first of these on Friday. I particularly like the fact that Lutz doesn’t read his answers (just as nobody writes his posts for him); he refers to some notes, but he speaks candidly. At one point, he gets downright passionate about his belief that GM is unsurpassed in bringing concept cars to production.

Barger did one more thing I like as part of this effort: The videos themselves are being posted to YouTube, and Barger is simply using the YouTube embed code to bring the video into the Fastlane blog.

Here’s the first video: