In the ARM an explicit cast to a reference type never invoked any
user-defined conversions.

class foo;
class bar{ public: operator foo&(); }

bar b;
foo& f = (foo&) b; // Changed meaning

In the ARM, the second line was equivalent to
  foo& f = *(foo*)&b; // Does not call bar::operator foo&();
the same as a reinterpret_cast<foo&>(b);

It looks like that since at least the Apr 94 draft the cast is treated as a
static_cast<foo&>(b), which does call b.operator foo&().

If I'm missing something here, please let me know.
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