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Quick question for the experts here:

I'm trying to build up a fleet of AFX non-magnatration cars that are all equal or close to equal in performance.

I'm finding that as I buy cars and chassis online, that there can be a great disparity in the performance of the cars. I understand that most of what is available is used or at least old stock. Is there any way to better ensure that when I buy cars performance will be close to the same? Or is it buy a bunch and hope for the best?

With any group of supposedly identical slot cars there is bound to be a spread in performance, the difference between the slowest and fastest cars is likely to be significant. The best that you can hope for is to have enough cars that are reasonably equal in performance. You might take a look at this tuning article: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11tPoKL ... sp=sharing .
You could work on the slower cars and improve their performance for a start. If you intend for the cars to be used as loaners in a formal race of some sort it is much easier to have a car in each lane that stays in that lane while the drivers rotate. That way the only difference would be the drivers themselves because everyone would be driving the same set of cars and their individual performance would factor out.
With pancake cars one reason for the variation in performance is likely to be the armatures, those can vary by a considerable amount. Replacement "Mean Green" armatures for A/FX cars are still easy to find and you could also use Johnny Lightning/Auto World armatures. You could also narrow the performance gap by putting slip-on silicone tires on the slower cars and leaving the stock rubber tires on the faster ones.

sounds like it is your turn to tinker
with the slow cars to make them faster. Or as noted run them one car dedicated to each lane let it be!

The only way to get 50 year old toy cars to perform equally is to go through each one of them piece by piece.

Aside from variations in the actual parts, that will have to be identified and sorted. The test and tune aspect is critical to get them all close. AFX chassis are sensitive to comm spring adjustment. Subtle changes in the pick up shoe adjustment can make a big difference. Typically a little "toe up" goes a long ways. Gear train performance makes a huge difference from chassis to chassis as well. A "scritchy" gear plate, mismatched or odd idler or crown gear can throw things for a loop without even trying.

The tendency is often to immediately start throwing replacement or hotrod parts at a problem. I usually go through an unknown chassis and a get a baseline first. By first working with what I have, I can determine if I'm scrubbing speed/power that it already has, or if it never had it in the first place.

I agree that you should not start out by adding expensive aftermarket parts to the cars. Since it is easy to exchange gear plate/armature assemblies between pancake cars one thing that you might try is to take your fastest and slowest cars and exchange the gear plate assemblies. If the main problem with the slow car is located there the slow car will be faster and the fast car will be slower. If swapping the assemblies makes little difference your problem is elsewhere and the tips in my article should be helpful.