General Motors says 53 percent of today’s Chevrolet customers are new to the division, the company’s largest. If true, that is a very good thing. Those new customers are experiencing a Chevrolet that passionately understands it has to compete worldwide for customer loyalty.

The old Chevrolet sort of forgot it was a part of a larger world and fell victim to success — “See the USA in Your Chevrolet” and all that. It made the mistake of thinking drivers could only see the U.S.A., or anywhere else, in a Chevrolet, until they started discovering places around the country in Toyota, Mazda and Nissan cars that took them farther for less and didn’t break down — heck, cars that simply took them seriously.

It took GM and its other U.S. rivals — Ford and what is now Fiat Chrysler Automobiles — a while to figure that out. But they’ve now figured it out and are competing globally for car sales.

The new front-wheel-drive Cruze sedan, built in Lordstown, Ohio, fits nicely into the global competition for common-sense automobiles.

Those are cars that are reasonably affordable by a large segment of the buyer population and that are safe, comfortable, reliable and generally likable. You won’t necessarily win races in any of them. They are neither designed nor built for that.

But they will get you where you are going in weather fair or foul, assuming you aren’t dealing with a severely dangerous “evacuate” or “shelter-in-place” storm. They are, in the main, very good cars and are well worth the money.

That certainly is the case for the 2016 Cruze RS, equipped with a complete suite of advanced electronic safety equipment, at a final transaction price of $29,035.

The Cruze’s new standard engine is modest — designed to move you reliably with little drama. It’s a turbocharged (forced air) 1.4-liter, inline four-cylinder model that sips regular gasoline. It offers competent highway performance mostly in the slower right and central lanes with good fuel economy — 38 miles per gallon, in my experience.

But the biggest thing I like about this compact car is that you are never alone, never out of touch in its fully optioned cabin, which includes OnStar 4G LTE connectivity with Wi-Fi hot spot. You can pull off to a safe place on the side of the road and handle emergency business calls, return messages or do other work. Finish, and keep heading to the office, or going home.

This is a lighter Cruze, by 250 pounds, than the previous model, which continues on sale as the Cruze Limited. But lighter does not mean less safe. To me, it means much more maneuverable, which is the case for the 2016 model.

Equipped with all the advanced electronic safety options — blindside monitoring, forward-collision and lane-departure warning — it is safer and more maneuverable. I like that.