I’m walking down a sweltering dock in Miami, FL, dripping sweat and chugging water when the new Formula 457 Center Console Sport catches my eye. I jump aboard for a look and am immediately drawn towards the helm, where three gloriously massive MFDs are flush-mounted side by side in a glass-bridge style and… hold the phone people, what is this?! There’s a luxuriously cool breeze bathing my face and wafting across my back. Sweet relief from the heat is enveloping me and it no longer feels as if I’m in a Floridian furnace, thanks to air conditioning piped in not only from the console but also breezing through from behind the seats. I do what any sentient human being would do: I sit down. And I find that I’m ensconced in a bolstered adjustable seat with thickly padded arm rests and multiple cupholders within easy reach. You say you want a center console sport boat with a luxury level of 10? Formula has created it.
Driven though I was to check out the convertible bow lounger with integrated cooler, forward U-seating, and adjustable dinette/sunpad surrounded with USB ports, cup holders, and multicolor RGB mood lighting, it seemed to make a lot more sense to check out the also-air-conditioned console cabin next. Sure, it maintains that sky-high luxury level, but the cabin in this boat is set apart from its competitors in a number of ways. Sheer volume helps, of course, and once inside it’s tough to believe you’re standing inside a center console—one with six feet, six inches of headroom throughout, no less. There’s a full galley area in the middle to starboard including a microwave, sink, refrigerator, and deep slide-out drawers. Forward, the convertible settee/dinette/berth is topped by a flush LCD TV and enjoys the full beam of the console rather than coming to a narrow point moving forward like most. Aft you’ll discover a large head compartment which also stretches the full width of the console and has a separate stall shower to starboard.
Taken together, that bow arrangement and the console cabin demonstrate how Formula designed this boat to best utilize the available space. By utilizing the maximum available beam in the cabin but still allowing plenty of length for the bow cockpit, there’s ample room to relax both above decks and below. And that’s without even considering the aft cockpit as of yet. Behind the two-row helm deck seating there’s a huge wet bar with gobs of stowage. The lower half is slide-out seating that faces aft where you can set up the removable pedestal-mounted dinette tables, also within easy reach of the transom bench seating.
There’s plenty more we could talk about in that cockpit, ranging from hullside doors on both sides to the electric grill in the transom. But we’re running out of room without having touched on performance yet, and as anyone familiar with Formula boats knows, this is going to be a high point that can’t be overlooked. With triple Mercury Verado V-12 600-hp outboards on the transom and Formula’s 22-degree deadrise, twin-stepped FAS3Tech hull skimming the water’s surface, the 457 Center Console Sport can top the 60-mph mark. Yes, this 33,250-pound 45-footer can hit highway speeds. Even when you set the throttles for a relatively mellow 4500 rpm cruise, you’ll be clipping along at over 40 mph.
Another thing we need to make sure we touch on is, well, special touches. On this boat they’re all over the place. You decide you’d rather have a fresh sea breeze as opposed to air conditioning at the helm? No problem, just press a button and the entire windshield raises up. Your phone is dying? Not aboard this boat, because there are induction chargers at the helm and integrated into the first-row seating seatbacks so you can charge up wherever you’re perched. The beam sea makes the boat rock and roll? Balderdash, all you need to do is turn on the Seakeeper 6 gyroscopic stabilizer.
The bottom line? Formula sets a new bar for luxury on a high-performance center console with the 457 Center Console Sport. Get ready to turn that dial from 10 to 11.
By Lenny Rudow
Formula 457 Center Console Sport Specifications:
LOA: 45’7”
Beam: 13’9”
Draft (max.): 4’6”
Displacement (approx.): 33,250 lbs.
Fuel Capacity: 700 gal.
Water Capacity: 90 gal.
Max HP: 1800
Local Formula Dealer: Rhode River Boat Sales in Edgewater, MD. (410) 798-4445