What magnification is required to see detail on Mars / other local bodies? I have a 125mm Jones Bird newtonian telescope (very shoddy) with 6x lens (2× + 3×) essentially we were able to see a very small O (yeah that's to scale) with varied shades of red. 

Is Mars far away from earth right now relative to the average distance or is it just my telescope not powerful enough?

If I wanted to seriously have a chance at picking up significant features on Mars or perhaps pickup the rings of saturn or the red spot of jupiter, whats the minimum setup that I am going to need? 



This setup would run me around 3,000 dollars:





Its named...

Celestron CPC 1100 StarBright XLT GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain 2800mm Telescope with Tripo... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000ARFND2/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_x7mSBb39EAS9H

Would this be overkill? For $3,000 is this one of the better choices for local planetary observation?
You have several questions here:


Mars is relatively close to Earth right now (October 2018) - about 90 million km.
Is your telescope powerful enough for you to see detail on Mars?  From what you have said, it's difficult to tell.  You say you have magnification of 6x.  This is almost certainly wrong.  If you state the focal lengths of your telescope and its eyepieces we can work out the correct magnification available.  To see much detail on Mars you would need in excess of 100x magnification (same for Saturn, less for Jupiter), and ideally a lot more.  Your scope should be able to manage 100x.  However the Jones Bird design is known to be difficult to align (collimate) properly, so even with that magnification, you may just see a blur.  How much detail you can see will also be heavily affected by the state of the atmosphere - ideally you need a night when the air is calm. Sometimes a slight mist can indicate a steady atmosphere.
Would the CPC 1100 be overkill etc?  This is much more opinion based, but in short, yes - for a beginner anyway.  For an experienced observer, the answer is much more nuanced, and I'm not going to go into any of that.  The scope is generally regarded as pretty good for what it is.