A very late update on this.
we ended up splitting the trip into 4 areas:
Cote de Beaune (amazing Burgundy - yum)
Southern vosges (amazing roads - good fun)
Strasbourg (city break)
Champagne (for the fiz!)
It was nearly perfect in the end; two couples in a caterham and a fury, wine, twisties, good food, scenery and historic towns - oh, and a spa and a car museum.
The weather was a bit grey and drab almost all the time, it didn't seem to matter though. The wettest we got was driving into the low cloud at the top of the grand ballon (the highest bit of the vosge). We weren't even sure that the cafe we stopped at was really at the top as you could only see about 20 meters or so.
We drove straight down to burgunday from Calais, drank loads of wine and sent some 'keepers' home (still got em, tempting though it is) then a 4 hour drive up to the vosges mountains, and found a countache pootling round the hairpins and vallys (OK, we got lost...) good fun though, it sounded awesome at full chat. Anyway, it didn't get past so I count that as a win!
Accomodation was v friendly everywhere we went, Alistair Sawday places for all four stops. spent a few days in the mountains, took the girls to a spa across the border in germany then popped down to Mulhouse (pronounced 'mulloose') to the schlumpf museum. an amazing collection of cars, they had a veyron!
we made a day of travelling up the vosges mountains to the northern end, stopping at a monastary on a cliff overlooking the plain to the east, which eventually led to Strasbourg. we spent 3 nights there with the cars in an underground carpark. It was nicce to be able to drink, walk and enjoy ourselves a bit.
Next stop, champagne, to a lovely farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. we only had a couple of nights there but it was beautiful and relaxing with nice hosts and their very sweet daughter. (she straight up to the blue fury and hugged it) Apparently it's now called Sally??? Her mum had a nice old bright yellow Citreon so we lined them all up and had an impromptu photoshoot. Good fun!
Popped into 'Moet & Chandon' for a celler tour by a robot woman (seriously, so made up I swear she was 100% polymer). The whole place is full of pomp and ceremony and v impressive (huge) cellars. It tased nice too, I'm not really a champagne person though...
Two hours away from Calais on the trip home the Caterham blew an oil cooler pipe (unusual failure) and covered us in oil and then siezed in a sulk. We did our best to bodge the remaining oil pipe back to bypass the cooler and managed to get that sorted. Tried to start but it was locked solid. even 'aggressive bumping' wouldn't shift it. so the old crossflow died - (seized mains it turned out)
We made it though, a bit sad to not be with our mates till the end (they got home at 4am - fair play to the insurance company)
To sum up, I can heartily recommend north eastern france. burgundy is the only decent red wine area but blow me is it good! Lots of white wine in alsace though if that's your thing. Roads were ace, people were v pleasent and there's buckets of old stuff to see, nice restaurants too. Strasbourg was great; boat trips, bars, art galleries, cathedral - we saw loads. We even went clubbing till the wee small hours!