[Edit 1708 29/6/15: the sentence has been amended from "Laser" to "car" as Laser is particular to Australia and won't be significant in other countries]

Annotation:

Laser means Ford Laser, a brand of car popular in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. The meaning is that Tom's daughter was too ashamed to be seen by her friends getting into the car.

It may have looked a bit like this.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...a_%2801%29.jpg

May I ask something about this construction where the main character (Tom, as usual) is introduced as genitive case? (There are many, many of them). Would it be equally well-sounding to say:
His daughter pretended not to know Tom when he came...

> His daughter pretended not to know Tom when he came...

That construction is grammatically fine in my opinion. I think the construction would be used less that my sentence above. From my point of view, I'd tend to say the sentence as I have it above rather than "His daughter pretended not to know Tom ..."

I'm not sure if this a regional thing (Australian/British) or whether US English is different. A member who speaks US English may be able to comment.

[Edit: I hadn't seen CK's comment when I wrote the above comment. His point about it possibly being someone else's daughter is a good one. My version above overcomes this possible misunderstanding about whose daughter she is].

Thank you.
CK has already commented that he also prefers it the way it is.
As to "his daughter could possibly be someone else's daughter": we could also construct a situation where "him" is somone else than Tom.
Personally, in German, I would rather begin with "his daughter", but it's only a matter of style and I wanted to know if the same goes for English.