In i believe 1976, a law was passed that all new cars must be fitted with a drivers door mirror as well as the internal rear view mirror. A couple of years later, the passenger door mirror was added to the mandate. May have been a little more than a couple of years but sometime in the late 70s/very early 80s.
This spelled the demise of wing mirrors except as an optional accessory. It's also more convenient to adjust the door mirror than a wing mirror and less likely to be knocked out of adjustment by a wayward toddler or trolley in a supermarket car park.
These days as far as i understand it, for MoT purposes at least, two mirrors are needed. Arguably this could be a passenger door mirror and an internal rear view mirror but i think at least one of the mirrors has to be on the drivers door. I think this has come about because of car-derived vans with two door mirrors and a redundant or missing internal rear view mirror because the rear doors/tailgate don't have a window.
As for the headlamps, have a look at this pic :
A Volvo 264 of similar age, note the different grille and bonnet to the 244 :
Some markets did get the wider 264 style headlamps or variations thereof but not the UK as far as i'm aware. It's possible (probable even!) the PO of your new chariot spotted something like this and did some investigation and changed the headlights :
Other variations on "foreign" cars showed the rectangular headlamps so it seems that the larger headlamps could easily be retro-fitted.