It started in Munich, where Hermann Köpf — a lifelong rider who first sat on a 1939 Sachs Presto in a neighbour’s garden at the age of five — noticed something changing in the scene around custom and vintage motorcycles. The global interest was growing, the community was expanding, and the German-speaking world had no publication that captured the culture as a whole: the craftsmanship, the lifestyle, the people, the road. Together with Jan Zühlke and Christoph Blumberg in Berlin, Köpf launched CRAFTRAD — a magazine whose name fuses the English word for handmade work with the German word for bike.
Based in Berlin and published with a premium, minimalist design sensibility, CRAFTRAD covers motorcycle culture through the lens of the people who live it. The stories centre on vintage models that their owners have restored, modernised, and rebuilt with obsessive attention to detail — but the magazine goes far beyond technical specifications. There are travel reports from riders on long-distance journeys, profiles of workshops and builders from Taiwan to California, and features on the design philosophy behind the machines. Winston Yeh of Rough Crafts in Taiwan, one of the world’s most recognised custom builders, has been profiled in its pages. Seventeen issues and counting, CRAFTRAD treats motorcycle culture the way the best food magazines treat cooking: as a way of being in the world, not just a hobby.
Available at selected bookshops including soda Books in Munich and ausberlin in the capital, as well as at train station newsstands and online, the magazine connects the Motorrad spirit with readers who care as much about the aesthetic as the engine. The word “craft” is in the name for a reason: this is a magazine that believes the most beautiful machines are the ones somebody built by hand.
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