The chips themselves don’t tend break, but wires and connectors and sensors all do tend to break, and they are effectively part of the computer system. Today, it’s practically moot where you draw the line. Something mechanical on my CRV broke somewhere, and the computer didn’t know what it was, and so the dealer didn’t know what it was, and the computer tended to shut down over unknown problems, and it eventually caused a cascading failure of physical mechanical components when the timing belt melted and it took out the alternator with it.

> The bells and whistles are mostly for creatures comfort.

This is increasingly (and rapidly) less and less true. Traction control, lane assist, adaptive cruise control, and emergency braking, are all things computer controlled (and things that are programmed to disable when the computer barfs. You can argue these are creature comforts, but in my experience they are becoming necessary modern safety features.

In a previous car, the sound system wigged out completely when it was only 5 years old. That’s a creature comfort, except really annoying to go without, and it was insanely expensive to replace, several thousands for a pretty basic stereo.