[Drifter2]

I've used some of those cheap (brushed) motors and they go good, but not for long. So you need to replace it which doubles the cost, plus inconvenience. Maybe I'm just unlucky.
I've not had to replace an R/C aeroplane brushless motor ever. The cheaper brushed motors I've used were electrically noisey and caused trouble with the electronics, no problem if you're only  running analog cars.

A reasonable quality brushed slot motor from Armchairracer is circa $28.  The brushless inrunner motor I have on my bench for a slot car cost $35au, but cheaper ones are available. Finding one with suitable kv is the challenge, or buy one and rewind it. e.g

   
   

The ESC/ECom I'm experimenting with (from a drone)  accepts standard Arduino pwm signals as well the usual R/C 20ms. So I'm wondering if I can run the ESC /ECom from the pwm motor output from a commercially available digital slot car decoder? 
Also the ESC/ECom has an Atmega MCU and the SPI pins are unused, so a nRF24 module may be a future possibility.

I fully understand if brushless doesn't appeal to everyone.