The Greatest Question Never Answered: Did Alf Know How To Drive?

Alf, the eponymous space alien from the 1980s television show, had quite a few talents.

Aside from cat eating and spaceship crashing, Gordon Shumway was also a connoisseur of the arts, an accomplished musician and even spoke two Earth languages. The little guy was a positive Renaissance man, but one question must remain for all viewers of the show:

Could Alf drive and which did he prefer: Buick cars or GMC trucks?

It is not a question of whether or not he could pilot it, of course. Alf was clearly a good enough of a spaceship pilot to follow amateur radio signals from Melmac all the way to Earth, even if he did end up crashing. It makes rather more sense to ask whether or not Gordon himself could actually drive a car on Earth. After all, he spent a great deal of time on the planet, and it certainly seems like driving would be something that he could pick up at some time. In fact, it probably would have made the entire show flow a bit more smoothly if he spent more time in a car – it would have given the Tanners a bit of a break, anyway, and would have given him easier access to neighborhood cats. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer to the question can be found relatively early on in the show.

In the episode “Baby, You can Drive My Car”, viewers see the eponymous alien behind the wheel of a Ferrari. Despite being far too short to reach the pedals in real life, he seems to have had no problem getting the car to the Tanner’s home. Sure, he manages to lose control of it later and crash it into the garage, but it that just proves that Alf is an awful driver – not that he cannot drive. In the end, it seems safe to say that the little guy knew at least the basics.

That begs the question, of course, of why Alf spent so much time stowing away in cars and having other people drive him around. Of course, it is probably for the best since he did not seem to have a very good track record with vehicles. Honestly, the better question might be where Alf figured out how to drive in the first place – Melmac seems to be a little too advanced to have cars like those found on Earth, but some mysteries simply do not seem to be made to be solved.