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RE: legislation is not always the answer
and i'm saying it won't work for a variety of reasons. anyway, if you want to make an immediate economic incentive to force people to drive slower (assuming the slight drop in speed is really worth it), don't use speed limits - put a tax on gas and tell everyone to conserve more. tax gas at ten cents per gallon or something, and have that tax go directly to government-sponsored energy research. that way, the future tech is also not in the hands of oil companies (who profit from maintaining the status quo).
also, as high as the gas prices are, you know the oil companies are making a shitload - even the US ones. was it texaco or someone that reported ridiculous gains a few quarters ago? actually - chevron was one of them yahoo article. note that this is the same thing that happened in 1973, during the "shortage." Time article from 1974
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RE: legislation is not always the answer
not having read your article on mileage that you cite, i wouldn't put too much faith in the derived stats. keep in mind that your jeep was not designed to go fast on the highway, compared to a BMW.
Those stats are about as accurate as it gets short of having a professional dynometer - they were sampled straight from the engine computer by tying a laptop directly to the OBDII port. Using the Jeep helped to demonstrate the extreme owing to its drag coefficient.
Now like you said, a BMW is designed to go fast, as are other sports cars. That does not, however, equate to being designed to be fuel efficient. The ability to go fast means having the horsepower to push through ever increasing pressure (from the article) of built up air. This is why the Bugati Veryon (sp?) is supposed to be awesome with its 1000hp engine. The quest for speed is answered with lower coefficients of drag and ever increasing amounts of horsepower.
The pursuit of such design improvements are handy - technology to make a vehicle safe at high speed will trickle down to make low speed vehicles safer. So I don't disagree with the need to continue the pursuit of engineering performance vehicles. On the flip side ... there is even less use for owning a vehicle that goes ridiculous fast than there is for a vehicle that can haul a load or navigate off-road. :-)
I only bring this alternative up because Americans complain they want to reduce the stranglehold held on us from oil. But when an immediate remedy is at hand, that requires a little self control ... we don't want to have anything to do with it.
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