Are car upgrades applied globally?

Solution 1:

I'm not sure if I understand the question correctly.

But, from my understanding, No. Once you steal car X and tune it, it becomes a unique car, if car X gets destroyed and you can't repair it then you have to steal car X again and tune it again.

The only exception you have is for character specific cars. Like Trevor's Jeep, Michael's Audi and Franklin's Dodge/Ford. If you apply upgrades to them cars and then you destroy them, they will re-spawn with the upgrades there.

So answering directly to the question: It will be stock setup.