LOS ANGELES — Toyota will restart Tundra production today, even though dealers aren't exactly clamoring to stock up on the full-sized pickup.

With sales slumping, Toyota on Aug. 8 stopped building Tundras at San Antonio for three months. Now the Tundra is back — just as Ford rolls out the redesigned F-150 pickup and Dodge launches the redesigned Ram pickup.

Toyota is offering 0 percent financing on most of its lineup, including the Tundra. But Toyota's "Saved by Zero" campaign has been in place since Oct. 2, and Toyota has fared little better than the rest of the industry.

When production stopped, the goal was to halve the number of trucks in inventory, said Bob Carter, Toyota Division general manager.

'Not Toyotalike'

At the end of July, Toyota had about 60,000 Tundras in inventory, of which 45,801 units were in dealer stock. At the end of October, dealer stock had fallen to 29,784, according to Toyota.

But Tundra sales have fallen sharply. Initially, the company had hoped to sell about 20,000 a month. When the economy began to slow late last year, the forecast was revised to about 15,000.

In recent months Toyota has fallen well short of hitting its goal. Combined September and October sales were 14,121 units, off 62.3 percent from last year.

On top of 0 percent financing, Southeast Toyota Distributors LLC is offering $5,000 to $9,000 in rebates on the Tundra, said Kate Frost, sales manager at Toyota of Orlando in Florida.

"This is not Toyotalike; it's huge," Frost said. "Customers are getting a $40,000 truck for $30,000 with one incentive or the other."

Jeff Daniels, general manager of Toyota of Muncie in Indiana, said he sells about a dozen Tundras a month and still has 28 in stock, an amount that still is "a little uncomfortable." He doesn't see any pent-up demand.

"If I don't see another Tundra until January, I'll be happy," he said.

Competitors in 'panic mode'

Despite gasoline sinking below $2 a gallon in Sioux City, Iowa, Toyota dealer Rick Collins expects just to hang on until 2009.

Collins said neighboring Ford and Dodge dealers were in "panic mode" closing out their 2008-model trucks, but that didn't affect his business as much as the overall economy did. Typically, Sioux City sells 15 Tundras a month. In October, the store sold nine.

"Customer traffic is off," Collins said. "The election, bailout and negative news has slowed us down. But the 0 percent financing campaign has done two things: It told people that Toyota was conducting business as usual, and that there was money to lend."

Toyota dealers remain hopeful.

"I have no doubt that there is a pent-up demand," said John Matthews, managing partner of Pat Lobb Toyota of McKinney, Texas. "People are sitting on their hands out of fear, but it doesn't mean they don't want or need to buy a vehicle." 

Jesse Snyder contributed to this report