I would have a talk with your preferred dealer's service department. The sales experience while it may not be up to your liking, will not have as much of an impact long-term (even during a lease) as your service experience since that is what you are worrying about most. Discuss with them what the loaner experience is like in case of an emergency repair. I can't speak for the SoCal area, but I would assume there are a few Alfa dealers to check out.
The better of the dealers are the ones that are paired with Maserati (one by me is even paired with Ferrari), rather than Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep. Anyone with worries as to Alfa surviving can be reassured as the Stellantis CEO has said that they intend on keeping Alfa in the states and bringing out new products for them and Maserati.
As for Giulia reliability, every car will be a YMMV situation, you could have great luck or bad luck so I can't speak on that, but I will say I do have a few friends who have all had Giulia and Stelvio 2.0T's, and they say that these are decently reliable, the Quadrifoglio are the more problematic models with their engines. One friend has put over 80,000 miles on his Giulia and only had minor issues such as a bad oil sensor. Another friend had put 50,000 on his Stelvio with no issues either. Of course there may be others who have experienced differently, but that is all I can say from those that I know. Funny enough they both mentioned that the alarm has gone off on them randomly two or three times (typical Italians
). And then of course MotorTrend also did a long-term test of a 2.0T Giulia at the same time as C/D but there's happened to be trouble-free for 20k+ miles, and this was an older 2018 model but everyone usually only pays attention to the QV. For the 2.0T, I believe any issues are more likely to be electronic related rather than engine or powertrain related.
It really is a hard decision, truly one of going with your head versus your heart as there really is nothing that drives as well as the Giulia in its class, not to mention the lease deals I've seen on Leasehackr for the Giulia's are really good. I think it could be a great car to lease but I'm also not as adverse to risking it for a 2.0T, a QV would be a different story. If I did get one, I'd get a Ti Sport with the Performance Package.
Good Luck
