They didn't mention Conroy in the Hot Rod article as I recall, they were merely pointing out the rule-bending. All was passed off as a Canadian GM thing until somebody checked and cried foul.

Back in the day I could very well see a dealer creating a unique model, or features being used to lure in customers. The seduction of power was a great seller, whether it be in a silent Cadillac or a clacking solid lifter high performance engine. At a dealership utilizing a modular approach to replacing one engine with another version from the same family was as close as they could come to an assembly line installation, short of the COPO or CSL process. With the handful made & sold it underscores the decision by GM not to produce those fringe models on a production basis, as they would have to stock all the parts, keep on top of technical bulletins for that handful of cars. These are not hand-built by panel beaters in Modena, Italy, these are mass-produced cars. Options were yours for the ordering, but any that deviated too much from base equipment and took a lot of engineering for a very small run was not attractive to a manufacturer. To handle such requests it would have to run through both marketing & engineering, be assigned a C.S.L. #, then it was available for any dealer to place an order. They didn't do that with the Conroy Beaumonts as far as I know (except for possibly the Expo 67 car). Speculation on my part.