16 months into a wonderful relationship with my beautiful and sexy Giulia, but she stinks - bad!
A mouldy smell is being emitted from the ventilation system. A stale, mouldy odour probably caused by an accumulation of mould - duh. Especially so upon starting the car in the morning.
I assume this is due to the automated climate control system's overuse of (computer controlled) recirculating air.
Driving, if you can call it that, in
Jakarta's Melbourne's awful traffic on a daily basis, the inherent pollution in the air (from thousands of cars sitting around doing essentially nothing enjoyable) detected by Giulia, would logically make her elect to use the marginally cleaner air in the cabin (mostly comprised of farts), rather than the poison on the other side of the windscreen.
Manually selecting the 'fresh' air (indicator light off) mode and turning off the aircon for a few minutes does help clear the stink.
Repeating this process daily for extended periods (15-30 minutes) seems to keep the problem under control. However, i suspect it will return once I hand over management to the car's computer again.
A friend who purchased his Giulia 3 weeks after me, tells me his car started doing the same at more or less the same time (16 months).
This is not a problem unique to the Giulia or Alfa Romeo (thanks Google).
She is up for her second service, so I will mention it to the dealer. I look forward to their empathy and promise to rectify the problem.

Still, awesome car.