The Porsche 928 is a grand touring car with a 2+2 seating layout, initially conceived to address changes in the automotive market, it represented Porsche’s first fully in-house design for a production vehicle and was intended to potentially replace the Porsche 911 as the company’s flagship model. The 928 aimed to blend the performance and handling characteristics of a sports car with the comfort, spaciousness, and ride quality of a luxury car. Porsche executives believed that the 928 would have broader appeal compared to the compact, somewhat outdated, and slow-selling air-cooled 911.

The 928 S4 variant debuted in the second half of 1986 as a 1987 model, an updated version of the 5.0L V8 for all markets producing 235 kW; 316 hp, sporting a new single-disc clutch in manual transmission cars, a larger torque converter in automatic transmission cars and fairly significant styling updates which gave the car a cleaner, sleeker look.

In 1988 an SE (sometimes called the S4 Sport due to model designation on rear bumper), a sort of halfway point between a normally equipped S4 and the more race-oriented Club Sport, became available for the UK market. It is generally believed that these cars have more power than the usual S4.