By DEREK ROSE
 DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

 A dozen daring refugees were caught trying to get to Florida from Cuba - by driving.

 A green 1951 Chevy flatbed truck was pulled over, floating on a raft of empty 55-gallon oil drums, with a propeller hooked to the drive shaft that gave it a speed of perhaps 5 knots - about 6 mph.

 "It looked like it was out of 'Junkyard Wars,' the TV show," said Jonathan Wray, a gunner's mate on the Coast Guard cutter Key Largo.

 The patrol boat intercepted the vintage vessel on July 16 about 40 miles from Havana after it was spotted by a U.S. surveillance plane.

 "It was one of the weirdest migrant crafts I've come across," said Wray, 20, who has dealt with inner-tube vessels, Styrofoam tubs and makeshift catamarans in his two years with the Coast Guard.

 The truck-boat's wheels were still attached, and the Cubans apparently steered it by turning the direction of the propeller from the truck bed, Wray said.

 The refugees did not resist as authorities evacuated their craft, and Wray then sank it by blasting holes in it with his 25-mm. machine gun.

 "It's just a floating hazard to navigation," Wray said.

 The Cubans were returned to Cuba under the U.S. dry foot/wet foot immigration policy, which allows Cuban refugees to stay only if they reach dry land.

 "These guys deserve a visa just for creativity," said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami. "These guys are the people we need - talk about ingenuity! The whole thing worked! I can't believe they sunk it."