Hi,
I've had similair dilemmas recently, having been faithfull to Scalextric, with a stable of all Scaley Cars.
When I was a kid I bought an old Airfix Slot Car, which was awful, so never bothered with other makes after that
All I can say is, things have moved on these days, and recently I've taken the plunge and bought other makes !!
I'm mainly into Rally Cars and a few GT's
First one was a NINCO Gallardo in Flatex Livery, basically bought because the Scaley ones were all low detail Super Resilient.................
Loved it, good looking, goes well out of the box, converted easily to digital with a Slot It Chip, so I bought the Ninco Saxo which proved to be just as good.
Since then I've bought 3 SCX, JWRC Fiesta, Mk II Escort and Cosworth Escort well happy and an MSC 6R4 awesome car, a different league, will deffo get the RS 200
I have to say that with a little fettling all the above cars can run really well, mostly just lube and truing.
I'm not a purist, but I'm into 1:1 Stage Rallying and more than happy with the detail on the cars.
The Ninco Lamborghini has a little whine from the gearset, but this just makes it sound more realistic on full chat down the straight, and if I was that bothered about having a silent car, aftermarket gears are cheap enuf
HTH,
Dave