diff --git a/influxdb/dataframe_client.py b/influxdb/dataframe_client.py
index 2d90fda3..1841633b 100644
--- a/influxdb/dataframe_client.py
+++ b/influxdb/dataframe_client.py
@@ -16,8 +16,10 @@
     from .client import InfluxDBClient
 
     class DataFrameClient(InfluxDBClient):
+        err = err
+
         def __init__(self, *a, **kw):
             raise ImportError("DataFrameClient requires Pandas "
-                              "which couldn't be imported: %s" % err)
+                              "which couldn't be imported: %s" % self.err)
 else:
     from ._dataframe_client import DataFrameClient