Toyota Motor Corp.'s President Akio Toyoda bows during a news conference at the Toyota headquarters.

A few years ago, it would have been considered lunacy to predict that Toyota, long the icon of quality among global automakers, would find itself in a reputational freefall.

In most of the 15 years I have worked on public relations and marketing programs with various automakers, including Toyota, one thing had always seemed clear: Toyota was an unstoppable manufacturing leader against which all other carmakers would be judged.

The brand represented consistency. Their cars were never flashy, never thrilling, but they worked, they lasted. The company used that brand platform to transform itself from a regional Japanese manufacturer in the 1950s and 1960s into the world’s largest automaker, largely at the expense of the U.S. auto industry.

But now look. With sales and share price plummeting, the industry and its consumers worldwide are wondering when the company will hit rock bottom. And, in my estimation, it still has a way to fall, in light of the newest questions being raised about its flagship darling, the Prius.

While it’s too soon to count Toyota out as a long-term player, there is a strong argument to be made that the bungled recalls and amateurish handling of the safety crisis of the past month spell the end of the world as Toyota knew it, and that there has been a basic resetting of the industry’s future.

Certainly, U.S. carmakers stand to regain share and have already accelerated marketing programs to get car buyers into their showrooms. But the biggest long-term opportunity to acquire the customers who will flee Toyota lies with the surging Korean manufacturers and, ultimately, the emerging Chinese makers.

Hyundai and Kia, the big Korean brands, have been on a growth tear since the global recession laid GM and Chrysler low in 2008. Experts predict that Hyundai will continue to win over customers in the largest auto markets of North America and China with its combination of modest price and the promise of quality implied by their 10-year warranties. Not to make too fine a point of it, but this is exactly the formula Toyota used to march to the top of the industry after the 1980s.

In China, the government-supported manufacturers are making better and better cars that will soon meet the tough regulatory requirements to enter the U.S. and European markets. And given the ability of Chinese manufacturers to deliver products at very low cost, they, too, will have an opportunity to deliver value and quality to budget-minded drivers worldwide.

Are these reasons to cheer in Beijing and Seoul? Perhaps, but Toyota’s fall from grace also should raise concerns in Korea and China about the fragility of auto market leadership and set off some serious planning to anticipate and avoid a similar fate.

While Toyota’s manufacturing problems are very real (the recalls focus on the ability of a driver to control a vehicle’s speed and stop it effectively, and there’s nothing more basic), the company’s communications strategies over the years contributed significantly to the magnitude of its current woes.

In an era when customers demand corporate transparency as well as quality products in order to trust a company, Toyota failed to deliver either. The company always maintained a less-is-more approach to its marketing and PR, content to ride its product reputation as a vehicle to achieve corporate reputation. Consumers outside Japan were never allowed to see beyond the marketing and sales operations it built worldwide and into the heart of the enterprise.

This failure created the infrastructure for its inept early communications efforts when the recall news broke. At first, the company said nothing. Then, it issued non-responsive statements from faceless communications staffers. Even when it realized it needed a corporate face to reassure customers, it relied upon its U.S. sales executive, Jim Lentz, as the face of the company. Its global CEO, Akio Toyoda, was saying little, except when cornered by reporters at the Davos meeting of global business leaders. What was he doing in Davos, anyway, at a time when his company was facing its worst crisis in history?

By the time, Toyoda came out from behind the cloaks of the boardroom, the serious damage was done; consumers had been spooked, and Toyota’s corporate reputation was plummeting at an unprecedented rate.

For Korean and Chinese auto executives, the communications lesson should be clear. While it is inevitable that their products at some point will face a serious quality challenge given the complexity of a modern automobile and the industry supply chain, it is not inevitable that their communications capability will fail when the pressure is on.

To support their market aspirations, the Korean and Chinese companies must build a robust, transparent communications and public policy structure that engages stakeholders broadly. Consumers, NGOs, government regulators and shareholders all must have a stake in the future success of those companies.

Every company must learn to operate in the open, social communications environment that now defines business. And success will be built on a three-legged platform: Transparency, trust and quality products. If the emerging Asian auto-manufacturing giants hope to avoid a future collapse of credibility, they must get focused on this new model.

Toyota didn’t get it, and is now paying a dear price.