Ford Prefect (also called Ix) is the main supporting character in the Hitchhiker's trilogy, which ironically has five books. he is from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and had come to Earth under the guise of an out of work actor (an identity he reinforced by carrying clippings of scripts and plays in his bag. ) His real mission, is to catalogue information on the planet Earth, for a revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. His grand total of fifteen Earth years spent on the planet, leaves him with "Mostly Harmless" as an entry for Earth in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Ford acts as protagonist Arthur Dent's guide and source of explanation for most of the wacky shennanigans that happen over the course of their travels. Ford's original name is "only pronounceable in an obscure Betelgeusian dialect" which was almost wiped out by the "Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758," a mysterious catastrophe which took place on the planet of Betelgeuse Seven and which Ford's father was the only man to survive. He chooses the moniker Ford Prefect, as he believes that cars are the dominant species on earth, so he chooses the name of a popular British car at the time. It is a joke widely lost on most audiences.