Career
His technically remarkable high performance versions of the Austin 7 included the astounding ‘’’Musso’’’ or, as the Australian racing public preferred to refer to it, the Conoulty Special Austin Comet. Conoulty’s Sydney, Australia built Comet 65 roadster is also noteworthy. Conoulty did not turn to automobiles, though, until 1927 and to competition automobile racing until 1929.
Prior, thereto, he was, instead, famed as a motorcyclist and motorcycle racer.
He set many Australian speed records on his 500 cc Douglas (motorcycles). In 1925, he set a grass track record in Deagon, Queensland of 101.6 mph that stood for 18 years.
In front of some 5000 spell bound spectators at Maroubra Speedway, he set a track record of 92.6 mph during a neck and neck race of 2 Australian leaders of an international assemblage of racers. One of Conoulty’s novel and peculiar inventions was a tractor, powered by a gasoline fueled internal combustion engine, but, that could be used indoors without hazarding the carbon monoxide poisoning of a building’s inhabitants.
Such a tractor was used in the late 1930s to haul a trolley of heavy soiled linen carts at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, Australia.
He also devised one of the earliest "Globe of death", where a modified Austin 7 and a Douglas motorcycle traveled in opposite directions.
