There are handful of family customs that define the performance pleasure-boating experience, hulls that have earned a particular status within a industry that is already elite and separate from mainstream family boating. One of the leaders of the pack is a beacon among bowriders, Essex Performance Boats' 21-foot Sterling.

Essex continues to reinforce the construction values and quality finish work that have made the company one of the fastest-growing custom builders in history, and the Sterling one of the industry's best-selling, most revered, custom open-bows. Our team's most recent rendezvous with Essex's best-selling of four models was a pointed reminder that the Sterling has lost none of its alluring step as it carved, cut and comforted its way through our test stations. Indeed, our team drivers were unanimous in naming it one of the industry's best all-around family boats, an assessment they don't take lightly.

The appeal lay deeper than the Sterling's smooth tooling and trick interior. Delve beyond the sheen and shine pieced together by one of the most talented rigging, finishing and glass-and-paint houses in the country, and you will find the heart and soul of a muscleboat.

A small-block, open-bow muscleboat? Skeptics, cut straight to the numbers! Even before our latest soirée with Sterling, the Essex had staked earlier, official claim to the title of the quickest stern-drive bowrider ever put through our acceleration tests under stock production, small-block power. This year's session did nothing to dispel to the notion of the Essex as a true performance boat. It was one of the quickest participants in our test cove, despite a horsepower handicap. It also froze the radar digits at 63.5 miles an hour, one of the fastest recorded performances ever by a small-block-powered, stern-drive V-bottom.

It turns out that the 350 Magnum MPI and counterrotating Bravo Three drive combo is, in a manner of speaking, quite well suited to the dynamics of the Sterling's straight-vee underside cut. Only five of the widely varying 17 boats we tested at Havasu found 40 miles an hour any quicker than the Essex. Remarkably, every one of them had more power on tap than the 300 horses pumped out by our test boat's multi-port small block, funneled through the Three drive. MerCruiser has found a smooth, highly driveable combination in the counterrotating setup and fuel-injected 350, and the Essex is the perfect donor hull.

Top marks for interior workmanship, handling, features, and fit and finish rounded out the Sterling's report card, which served to underscore Essex's growing notoriety as one of the industry's true premium custom builders.