Trek Bicycle and Mazda just signed a multi-year deal that puts Mazda’s name on Trek’s North American off-road racing programs. The CX-50 crossover is now the official team vehicle for Trek’s mountain bike and gravel squads, showing up at UCI World Series stops and grassroots gravel events alike.
The partnership covers Trek’s Unbroken XC and DH mountain bike teams, the Driftless gravel program, and a string of events stretching from Soldier Hollow, Utah, to Lake Placid, New York. Mazda is supplying CX-50s for athletes, staff, and race-day logistics across the continent.
It is a classic lifestyle play. Mazda needs the CX-50 to mean something beyond “compact crossover in a crowded segment.” Trek needs fleet vehicles that can haul bike trailers down forest service roads without complaint.
Brad Audet, Mazda’s chief marketing officer for North America, leaned hard into the brand-overlap language, calling it “a natural fit” and talking about movement as a way to “enrich our lives.” Trek’s global sports marketing director Tim Vanderjeugd kept it more practical: “Having the support of a dependable brand that’s as passionate about the outdoors as Trek will be a huge boost to our race day operations.
The real audience here is not the elite racers. It is the weekend warriors watching them, the ones who drive to trailheads with a bike on the roof rack and a dog in the back seat. Mazda wants those buyers to picture a CX-50 in their driveway.
Mazda will also appear at Trek’s Supper Club Gravel Series and the Wisconsin Off Road Series, events that draw enthusiastic amateur fields and the kind of community-driven atmosphere that automakers dream about for experiential marketing. These are not stadium sponsorships where your logo sits on a wall. These are muddy parking lots where people actually touch the product.
The CX-50, built at Mazda’s joint venture plant with Toyota in Huntsville, Alabama, has been positioned since launch as the brand’s most outdoors-oriented vehicle. Roof rails, a wider stance than the CX-5, and available turbocharged power were all designed to court the active-lifestyle crowd. But in a market where every manufacturer from Subaru to Toyota to Hyundai is chasing the same trail-running, bike-hauling buyer, a Trek logo on your marketing materials is one way to buy authenticity.
Gravel racing has exploded over the past five years, drawing thousands of participants to events in rural communities across the Midwest and Mountain West. The demographics skew affluent, educated, and brand-conscious. For a relatively modest sponsorship investment compared to NFL or PGA deals, Mazda gets face time with exactly the customer profile it wants for a $30,000-plus crossover.
Neither company disclosed the financial terms. The deal is described only as “multi-year” with a “significant investment” from Mazda. Trek, founded in Waterloo, Wisconsin, in 1976, has historically worked with automotive partners on a smaller scale, but this arrangement appears broader in scope than previous efforts.
The first visible activations will come at the upcoming UCI Mountain Bike World Series stops this season. Whether Mazda can convert trail dust into showroom traffic is the question that will determine if this deal gets renewed.
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