Toyota Motor Corp. will ratchet back its production of Tundra pickups and Sequoia SUVs in Indiana and Texas in response to slow sales.

The reduction in volume -- rare move for Toyota in North America -- will begin in late spring, according to Mike Goss, spokesman for Toyota’s North American production company. He said Toyota has no plan to layoff workers at either plant.

He declined to say how many fewer trucks it will produce this year as a result of the scale-back.

The slow-down will not affect production of the Sienna minivan, which is built on a separate line at the Tundra/Sequoia plant in Princeton, Ind.

Toyota launched its second Tundra assembly plant in San Antonio in late 2006 in a bid to compete head-on with the Detroit 3 for full-size pickup customers.

The Texas plant gave Toyota annual capacity to build 300,000 Tundras a year, or about 25,000 a month. In February, the company sold 14,400.

For the first two months of this year, light truck sales declined by 103,558 from the first two months of 2007.

Toyota will achieve the reduction by slowing down its production cycle. Normally, Toyota and other automakers rigorously build up the number of vehicles per hour their assembly workers can build.

Slowing down the cycle can take weeks to orchestrate, because individual jobs performed throughout an auto factory are performed at the same tempo and must be slowed down in unison.

After the slowdown begins, a quick uptick in truck sales would not be a problem for the plants, because they can schedule overtime to fill orders, Goss said.