You need to look over your reports carefully to see if what they are reporting is the “charge off” from the original contract or if it is the “deficiency balance” from the sale of the vehicle (or both) before you claim that they are reaging.

If you are looking at tri-merge reports from 3rd party companies, such as True Credit, etc., I would suggest that you order your credit reports from each CRA.
Tri-merges can be inaccurate or fail to report the full listing that the true CRA reports show.

A repo can actually have two seperate listings, from the original creditor, on a credit report (not counting a collector or a judgment).
One listing can be for the charge off of the original contract and the other listing can be for the deficiency amount after the vehicle was sold.
If they are reporting both then the charged off listing “must” report with a zero balance.

If they are reporting the charged off account only (and not the deficiency amount) and your last payment was in 2000, then the reporting period for the charge off would start in 2000 and cannot be reaged to report for a longer period.

If they are reporting the deficiency amount, then the reporting period would start on the date the vehicle was sold that created the deficiency.
Like bigdog said, if you returned the car in 2001 then the reporting period (for the deficiency amount) would start in 2001 since that would be the year the vehicle was sold creating the deficiency.

As for the collecting SOL for the repo, it would start on the date the vehicle was sold that created the deficiency. Since a repo voids the original contract, the repo would not fall under written statutes but under the UCC with a 4 year collecting SOL - which you are far past that date.

if you returned the car in 2001 then it goes on file in 2001 because you stated that you quit paying and returned it then it is on your report for 7 years