About PS

PS

PS – Das Sport-Motorrad Magazin is a German monthly motorcycle magazine published by Motor Presse Stuttgart, devoted to sport motorcycles: superbikes, naked bikes, sport tourers and the racing world. Where its sister title Motorrad covers motorcycling in its entirety, PS speaks to the rider for whom performance is the point — the track-day enthusiast, the Alpine-pass scratcher, the fan of MotoGP and Superbike racing. Each issue carries tests of the fastest production motorcycles, technology features, racing coverage and the unmistakable attitude of the performance tribe. Directories attribute the magazine's digital home to motorradonline.de/ps-online; the address could not be independently verified at research time, so no website is listed here.

Overview

PS appears monthly and occupies the performance pole of the German motorcycle press. Its content is built around speed: instrumented tests of superbikes and naked bikes with full performance data, comparison tests of the category's contenders, technology features on the engineering of performance — electronics, chassis, aerodynamics, tyres — and racing coverage from MotoGP and the Superbike World Championship to the German IDM series and the Nürburgring endurance races.

The magazine's tone is that of the enthusiast press at its most committed: knowledgeable, opinionated and viscerally engaged with the riding experience. PS readers know what a quickshifter does and why unsprung mass matters; the magazine writes for them without condescension and without compromise, celebrating the sporting motorcycle as the purest expression of the machine.

History

PS was developed within Motor Presse Stuttgart as the sporting complement to the fortnightly Motorrad, giving the performance-oriented reader their own monthly magazine. The logic reflected the segmentation of the motorcycle market itself: as motorcycles diversified into ever more specialised categories — the superbike, the naked, the sport tourer, the track weapon — the sporting rider deserved a title that spoke their language exclusively.

Published from Stuttgart within the Motor Presse motorcycle division, PS drew on the group's testing infrastructure — the measurement protocols, the test riders, the racetrack access — while developing its own editorial identity: faster, racier, more focused on the limit than the mainstream title. The monthly rhythm gives each issue the space for the definitive sporting test and the long racing feature, distinguishing it from the news-driven fortnightly.

The division of labour between the two Motor Presse motorcycle titles is one of German specialist publishing's neat solutions. Motorrad, the fortnightly founded in 1903, covers motorcycling in its entirety — the commuter, the tourer, the beginner, the classic enthusiast — with the news currency its fourteen-day rhythm allows. PS, the monthly, serves the sporting rider exclusively: the reader for whom the motorcycle is a performance machine and the racetrack a second home. The two titles share test riders, measurement equipment and the Stuttgart base, but they speak to different dreams — and the German motorcycle market is large enough to sustain both.

Content

Superbike tests are the centrepiece: the latest litre-class machines are tested individually and in comparison — acceleration, top speed, braking, lap times, electronics assessments — with the data presented in the detailed tables the performance reader demands. Naked-bike comparisons, sport-tourer tests and the middleweight sporting classes receive the same thorough treatment, and the annual model-year overviews map the state of the sporting art.

Technology features explain the engineering of speed: the evolution of the inline-four and the V4, the electronics revolution — traction control, wheelie control, slide control, cornering ABS — chassis geometry, suspension technology and tyre development, often with insights from the racing world where the technology is proven. Racing coverage follows MotoGP, Superbike and the national series with the insider knowledge of journalists who live the paddock.

The track-day world — the growing scene of riders taking their road bikes to circuits from the Nürburgring to Misano — is PS's natural habitat: track guides, riding-technique features, tyre and setup advice, and the culture of the fast group. Travel, in PS's world, means the great sporting roads: the Alpine passes, the Eifel, the circuits of Europe.

Racing coverage follows MotoGP, Superbike and the national series with the insider knowledge of journalists who live the paddock. The German IDM championship — the national superbike series — receives the sustained domestic attention the international titles cannot provide, while the magazine's MotoGP reporting brings the premier class's technology and personalities to German readers with the technical literacy the paddock respects. The Nürburgring endurance races, in which manufacturers and the magazine's own circle compete, connect the racing coverage to the German reader's home circuit.

Coverage & Audience

PS is sold throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland at newsstands and by subscription, appearing monthly. Its readership is the sporting motorcyclist: predominantly male, performance-oriented, investing in the fastest machinery and the track days to use it, and following racing with the devotion of the true fan.

Within the German motorcycle press, PS occupies the specialist sporting niche: more focused than the generalist Motorrad, more road-relevant than the pure racing publications, and the natural home for the superbike enthusiast. The magazine's test verdicts carry weight in the performance segment, where buyers choose between machines separated by fractions of a second and single horsepower.

Ownership

PS is published by Motor Presse Stuttgart GmbH & Co. KG, the Stuttgart-based special-interest publisher founded in 1946 by Paul Pietsch, Ernst Troeltsch and Josef Hummel. Motor Presse Stuttgart publishes around 80 magazines in Germany and abroad; its motorcycle division — led by the fortnightly Motorrad with PS as the sporting monthly — is the strongest two-wheeled portfolio in European publishing.

Since 2019 the company has been majority-owned by the descendants of founder Paul Pietsch, who hold 85 percent, with Hermann Dietrich-Troeltsch holding the remaining 15 percent. Within the group, PS shares the testing infrastructure, test riders and editorial expertise of the motorcycle division while maintaining its distinct performance identity.

Digital Presence

The magazine's digital presence runs through the Motor Presse motorcycle portal motorradonline.de — the most-visited German-language motorcycle website — where PS content appears alongside the group's wider motorcycle journalism: news, test data, videos and racing coverage. The digital platforms serve the performance rider's daily needs — the lap time, the new-model launch, the race result — while the monthly print magazine delivers the definitive sporting test and the long racing feature.

Video is central to the brand's digital expression: the superbike test, filmed at speed with telemetry overlays, is made for the screen, and the racing coverage comes alive in moving images. For the sporting motorcyclist, PS's combination of monthly depth and digital currency covers the fast world from the test bench to the chequered flag.

The racing coverage is the magazine's heartbeat: MotoGP's premier class with its technology and personalities, the Superbike World Championship, and the German IDM — the national championship where the domestic talent proves itself. The magazine's paddock access and technical literacy give its racing journalism the insider quality the sport's fans demand: the analysis that goes beyond the results into the machinery, the strategies, the human drama. The track-day scene — the growing world of riders taking their road bikes to the circuits — is the magazine's natural habitat: the track guides, the technique features, the tyre and setup advice for the fast group. The Nürburgring, the Eifel circuit that is German motorsport's home, appears throughout: the endurance races, the track days, the lap-time culture. The monthly rhythm gives each issue the space for the definitive sporting test and the long racing feature — the superbike comparison with full data, the MotoGP season analysis, the portrait of the champion. In the Motor Presse motorcycle division, PS is the sporting voice: the magazine for riders who measure their motorcycling in lap times, lean angles and the pursuit of the perfect corner.