A distributed vehicle information processing and vehicle control system has at least one first system part on board the vehicle side and at least a second system part, each for carrying out one or more vehicle-related application functions, with the system parts communicating with one another via an associated data transmission network. The systems parts have a component-based construction composed of different components, which communicate with one another in order to carry out different functions. Each component has a function-calling interface, via which the function carried out by the component can be called up by other components, in this system part or in another system part, and a configuration interface via which its configuration can be defined and varied. A configuration manager unit, provided for this purpose, configures the components via this interface depending on what other components are present in the system.