Nope Wattie, its a standard feature.
What you can do is buy the cheapest door handle, either side for about £65 and just swap the front hinge over. Some of the door handles are up to £200 depending upon the finish.
Next feature is the auto drop windows that fail to drop.....holding both windows fully down on the button for 10 secs then fully up for 10 secs does reset it and I suppose I don't need to tell you about the creaky front suspension and tailgates...still a great car.
One bit of preventative maintenance is to grease the oil cooler pipes in the front OS bumper, they rust and can result in you loosing all your oil, don't think I need to tell you what happens next.
All of the above are true and 'standard fit' for Alfa GTs!!
My car has the satin chrome trim, so the £200 per handle option! Fortunately I found a main dealer who heavily discounted one and I simply replaced the front hinge, bunging a load of copper grease in for good measure on the the pivot pin (this is the part which seizes and breaks).
The window reset is straight forward, but I have also come out to my car after an hour or so to find both windows dropped completely for no reason!
The oil cooler is something that every owner should inspect and maintain on a regular basis - the rubber oil cooler hoses have steel ends which fit into the alloy oil cooler. The steel is a poor grade and extremely prone to corrosion and so is the part which should be rust proofed/greased/hammerited/whatever. If the pipes need to be removed from the cooler they generally score the alloy upon removal and so render the oil cooler as scrap because a decent seal cannot be made afterwards. I found this out to my cost (this issue is not covered under warranty!) and had to have 2 replacement pipes plus an oil cooler. Over £600 from a sympathetic Alfa specialist (Autolusso).
The other issue not mentioned is the pin which secures the clutch pedal to the clutch master cylinder rod - I think this problem is specific to RHD cars. When the pedal is depressed it puts a sideways load on the rod before it's pushed forward into the m/c. There is a steel pin which secures the pedal which takes most of the load and subsequently fails due to fracture. The result is a clutch pedal which drops to the floor (mine on the busy A4!) A replacement pin is pennies, or you can use a nail, key ring or any other metal item which comes to hand as an emergency measure!! The pin was also fitted upside down at the factory and will sometimes drop out causing the pedal to drop - if your pin drops out or breaks I guarantee you it will fall behind the clutch pedal foot rest!
Gotta love Alfas though, keeps things interesting! I still absolutely love mine and can't see anything else I would change it for currently as my daily.
