This. Try cleaning it first. Cheap and easy.
As for a scan tool, do yourself a favor a pick up a obd bluetooth scanner off of amazon. Download the torque pro app. You can set it up to watch alot including misses on each individual cylinder.
While your right, its your choice, you have to deal with it.
Dsm's arent exactly known for being reliable anyway, but if you start doing goofy shit like that, its really going to spend more time in the garage than on the track anyway.
I see the challenger as being the "crazier" one.
As for potential, lt4 all day long. The dodge already uses a pretty decent size blower so i cant imagine swapping to a new one would do a whole lot. The lt4 on the other hand uses a much smaller unit. One company did nothing more than swap on a bigger blower, and even ran it at stock psi, but picked up right around 100 hp.
Check out the coil packs and the thing they sit on (sorry, to tired to think of what its called right now lol). Had that go bad on mine and one minute it ran great, next it missed its ass off and had trouble getting the car to restart.
I used to get that all the time in the bird, never from other v8 cars though. It never happends in the gto though, i think most ricers still have no idea what it is lol.