Yamaha wades into Carlos Ghosn saga with warning about hiding in boxes

Yamaha has given its pseudo-humorous take on the increasingly bizarre Carlos Ghosn escape from Japanese authorities by warning people not to hid in its musical instrument boxes.

With tongue-firmly-in-cheek (we assume), Yamaha took to Twitter amid reports Ghosn – the former head of the Renault-Nissan automotive alliance – skipped his house arrest by hiding in a musical instrument box to evade authorities as he flew from Japan to Lebanon.

The almost slapstick Hollywood-esque tale widely reported – albeit denied by Ghosn himself – suggests the Brazilian-Lebanese national was smuggled through a private jet lounge in Kansai Airport in western Japan hidden in large speaker box that was too large to fit through the facility's X-ray scanner.

The case is an embarrassing slight on Japan, which had been building a case against Ghosn for allegedly hiding earnings, transferring investment losses to Nissan and misappropriating company funds.

Even so, though there is no confirmation the company was an unwitting participating in the great ruse, Japanese firm Yamaha felt it necessary to ‘warn’ people not to commit copycat getaways in one of its boxes in a tweet that was widely shared.

“We won't mention the reason, but there have been many tweets about climbing inside large musical instrument cases. A warning after any unfortunate accident would be too late, so we ask everyone not to try it.”

Of course, while we’re more interested in Yamaha for its two-wheel exploits rather than its other successful arm manufacturing pianos, speakers, double basses and drums, but given the sheer absurdity of his brazen escape, but we assume the same goes motorcycle crates like this one…

Tight squeeze...